SOCIAL  AND 

P/^SMT  DAY  QUESTIONS 

'""S  *• 


FREDERIC  W.  FA/IRA %_  DM,  F, 


f  'l 


SOCIAL  AND  PRESENT  DAY 
QUESTIONS 


BY 

FREDERIC  W.  FARRAR,  D.D.,  F.R.S. 

ARCHDEACON"  OF   WESTMINSTER, 

LATE   FELLOW  OF  TRINITY  COLLEGE,   CAMBRIDGE, 
CHAPLAIN  TO  THE  QUEEN,  AND  TO  THE   HOUSE   OF  COMMONS. 


BOSTON: 
BRADLEY   &    WOODRUFF. 


COPYRIGHT,  Nov.  16,  1891,  BY 
BRADLEY  &  WOODRUFF,  BOSTON. 


TO   THE 

&tg!)t  &efc.  Philips  Brooks,  IB.®., 

BISHOP   OF   MASSACHUSETTS, 

THIS  BOOK   IS  DEDICATED  WITH   CORDIAL 
AFFECTION  AND  DEEP  RESPECT. 


PREFACE. 

I  HAVE  contributed  the  publication  of  these  subjects  to  Messrs. 
Bradley  &  Woodruff,  of  Boston,  Mass.  There  is  a  fitness  in  their 
t  publication  by  an  American  firm,  because  several  of  them  pertain 
to  the  lives  of  eminent  Americans,  and  have  touched  on  events 
which  are  of  special  interest  to  the  Western  World.  My  distance 
from  the  place  of  publication  has  rendered  the  task  of  editing  less 
easy ;  but  I  trust  any  defect  may  be  forgiven,  and  hope  that  the 
volume  may  be  received  with  generous  consideration. 

F.  W.  FARRAR. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER.  PAGE. 

I.  SOCIAL  AMELIORATION, 7 

II.  NATIONAL  PERILS, 26 

III.  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES, 40 

IV.  NATIONAL  DUTIES, 54 

V.  FAITH  IN  HUMANITY, 69 

VI.  TRIALS  OF  THE  POOR, 82 

VII.  DUTY  OF  GIVING.    (THE  RIGHT  USE  OF  WEALTH.)  95 

VIII.  MAMMON  WORSHIP, 108 

IX.  RELIGIONISM, 118 

X.  ATHEISM, 131 

XI.  HISTORY, 148 

XII.  ART, 161 

/  XIII.  BIOGRAPHY  (THE  TEACHERS  OF  MANKIND),     ...  180 

XIV.  THE  PULPIT, 190 

XV.  BOOKS,  THEIR  POWER  AND  BLESSEDNESS,  ....  204 

XVI.  THE  IDEAL  CITIZEN, 216 

•   XVII.  SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH, 228 

XVIII.  GENERAL  GRANT, 244 

XIX.  GENERAL  GARFIELD, 254 

XX.  DEAN  STANLEY, 269 

XXI.  CARDINAL  NEWMAN, 282 

XXII.  CHARLES  DARWIN, 294 

XXIII.  JOHN  BRIGHT, 311 

XXIV.  GARIBALDI, 324 

XXV.  COUNT  LEO  TOLSTOI, 343 

XXVI.  THE  JEWS, 355 

XXVII.  NEED  OF  PROGRESS, 368 


QUESTIONS   OF  THE   DAY. 


SOCIAL  AMELIORATION. 

"Which  now  of  these  three  proved  himself  a  neighbor  to  him  who  fell 
among  the  thieves  ?  And  he  said,  He  that  shewed  mercy  on  him.  Then  said 
Jesus  i  to  him,  Go,  and  do  thou  likewise." — LUKE  x.  36,  37. 

Nearly  nineteen  centuries  have  elapsed  since  the 
angels  sang  their  carol  at  the  birth  of  Christ.  What  have 
been  the  issues  of  that  first  Christmas-tide?  Let  no  sor- 
row, no  discouragement,  make  us  fail  to  see  that  the  results 
have  been  immense  in  their  beneficence.  The  French 
statesman  cried  in  despair:  "Christ  has  come;  but  when 
cometh  salvation?"  An  English  poet  sings, — 

"  We  have  preached  Christ  for  centuries, 
Until,  at  last,  men  learn  to  scoff, 
So  few  seem  any  better  off." 

Let  not  such  notes  of  distress  blind  us  to  what  is  still  a 
splendid  reality.  The  abolition  of  slavery  among  Chris- 
tian nations;  the  extinction  of  gladiatorial  games  and  the 
cruel  shows  of  the  amphitheatre;  war  rendered  more  merci- 
ful; womanhood  honored  and  elevated;  childhood  sur- 
rounded with  an  aureole  of  tenderness  and  embraced  in 
the  arms  of  mercy;  education  extended;  marriage  sancti- 
fied; the  bonds  of  serfdom  broken;  hospitals  built;  the 
eternal  and  inalienable  rights  of  man  everywhere  asserted; 
pity  for  the  prisoners;  compassion  even  to  the  animal 


8  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

world;  the  gospel  preached  to  the  poor, —  these  are  some 
of  the  Gesta  Christi,  some  of  the  triumphs  of  Christianity. 
These  belong  not  only  to  its  ideal,  but  also  in  large  meas- 
ure to  its  achievements.  This  is  one  side  of  the  picture, — 
the  blessed  and  the  hopeful  side. 

There  is  another.  Do  not  make  the  common  mistake  of 
saying,  when  you  hear  it,  that  it  is  a  proof  that  the  gospel 
has  failed.  Never  and  nowhere  has  the  gospel  failed. 
Never  and  nowhere  has  Christianity,  where  it  has  been  a 
reality,  been  other  than  a  consummate  blessing,  and  the 
greatest  of  all  blessings,  to  mankind.  You  might  just  as 
well  say  that  Duty  has  failed,  because,  though  it  be  a 
thing  sublime  as  heaven,  yet  men  have  not  given  obedi- 
ence to  its  mighty  law.  But,  although  Christianity  has  not 
and  cannot  fail,  yet,  alike  in  heathen  and  Christian  lands, 
Christians  have  failed,  terribly,  egregiously,  again  and 
again, —  have  failed  to  rise  to  the  standard  of  their  own 
profession  or  to  realize  the  efforts  and  self-denials  which 
their  Lord  required. 

Whole  ages  and  generations,  alas!  have  failed  to  carry 
forward  His  banner;  and  multitudes  in  every  age  and  gen- 
eration have  even  betrayed  His  cause.  And  different  as 
are  our  degrees  of  guilt,  in  our  measure  we  are  all  guilty. 
Darkly  and  terribly  guilty  are  all  they  who  are  living  in 
wilful  and  constant  violation  of  the  law  of  God;  all  they  — 
everyone  of  them  —  who  sell  themselves  to  do  evil;  who 
work  all  uncleanness  with  greediness;  who  call  evil  good 
and  good  evil;  who  are  gaining  their  livelihoods  in  ways 
which  demoralize  or  degrade  or  defraud  their  neighbor; 
and  who  thus  fundamentally  deny  the  Lord  that  bought 
them,  and  count  the  blood  of  the  Covenant  whereby  they 
were  redeemed  a  common  thing. 


SOCIAL   AMELIORATION. 


9 


Guilty  also  are  all  those  —  and  they  are  many  —  who, 
without  active  and  flagrant  immorality,  live  only  to  the 
world  or  to  the  flesh;  selfish,  egotistical,  indifferent; 
caring  only  for  their  own  comfort  or  interest;  shut  up  amid 
their  own  refinements  and  indulgences,  heedless  of  the 
howling  winds  which  wrestle  on  the  great  deep  without, 
and  of  the  multitudes  who  are  being  helplessly  swallowed 
up  in  those  wild  waves. 

Less  guilty,  yet  still  needing  to  be  aroused  to  nobler 
aims,  are  the  multitudes  who,  though  not  useless,  not  im- 
moral, yet  too  blind  to  the  solemn  responsibilities  which 
God  lays  upon  us  all,  raise  no  finger  outside  the  circle  of 
their  own  narrow  domesticities  to  make  the  world  happier 
or  better. 

Least  guilty,  yet  not  wholly  to  be  acquitted,  are  those 
who  do  love  and  pity  their  suffering  fellow-men,  but,  fold- 
ing their  hands  in  mute  despair  before  the  perplexities  of 
life's  awful  problems,  need  to  be  fired  with  fresh  energies 
and  brighter  hopes. 

It  is  to  the  latter  classes  that  I  would  mainly  speak,  yet 
not  I,  but  the  Voice  of  God  in  the  events  of  this  our  day. 
And  the  message  of  that  voice  to  all  of  us  alike  is,  Do  not 
be  apathetic,  do  not  be  selfish,  do  not  despair!  "And  the 
Lord  said  unto  Moses,  Wherefore  criest  thou  unto  Me? 
Speak  unto  the  children  of  Israel  that  they  go  forward." 

One  of  the  many  ways  in  which  the  world,  and  the 
merely  nominal  Church,  try  to  check  every  effort  for  good, 
to  discourage  every  reformer,  and  choke  in  anguish  the 
voice  of  every  prophet,  is,  when  the  tale  of  misery  and  sin 
is  brought  under  their  notice,  to  say  that  it  is  "sensa- 
tional," or  "exaggerated."  It  is  a  very  contemptible  form 
of  obstruction.  But  I  suppose  that  the  most  callous  and 


IO  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  most  selfishly  optimistic  person  will  hardly  take  upon 
him  to  deny  that  here  in  England, —  here  in  London, 
—  here,  under  the  very  shadow  of  our  Abbey,  there  is  a 
vast  area  of  want  and  vice,  of  crime  and  misery,  the  exist- 
ence of  which  it  is  shameful  to  ignore,  since  the  facts  of 
it  are  daily  before  our  eyes  and  the  proofs  of  it  daily  thrust 
upon  our  notice.  Within  a  bow-shot  even  of  this  place  are 
streets  where  drink  and  harlotry  are  rampant;  where  men, 
women,  and  children  live  in  chronic  misery;  where  every 
now  and  then  some  terrible  crime  is  perpetrated.  And,  if 
the  ordinary  comfortable  citizen  does  not  know  all  that  we 
know,  yet  the  daily  journals  and  the  commonest  records  of 
justice  will  tell  him  of  the  ravages  of  sin  in  London, —  of 
betting  and  gambling,  drunkenness  and  impurity,  beggary 
and  ruin,  starvation  and  despair;  of  wife-beating,  wife- 
desertion,  child-murder,  outrage;  of  the  slum  and  the  rook- 
ery; of  rotting  tenements,  where  generation  after  generation 
pass  away  in  filth  and  vice,  steeped  in  dulness,  sodden 
into  brutality  by  drink;  of  the'training-house  of  the  thief, 
the  den  of  the  sweater,  the  cell  of  the  felon,  and  the  grave 
of  the  suicide. 

According  to  various  careful  estimates,  those  who  may 
be  called  "the  submerged  classes,"  or  "the  army  of  the 
destitute"  in  England,  are  some  three  millions, —  one  in 
ten  of  our  people, —  a  population  equal  to  that  of  Scotland. 
However  much  we  may  try  to  escape  from  the  burden  of 
our  common  Christian  duties  by  talk  about  exaggeration, 
the  fact  remains  that  here,  at  our  very  doors,  is  an  awful 
waste  of  splendid  human  material,  an  awful  shipwreck  of 
redeemed  humanity,  of  which  the  responsibility  falls  on 
the  Church, —  that  is,  on  every  one  of  us;  on  the  nation, — 
that  is,  on  every  one  of  us.  We  talk  of  slums,  but  the 


SOCIAL  AMELIORATION.  Ix 

voice  which  is  now  calling  to  England  says,  "To  many  the 
world  is  all  slum,  with  the  workhouse  as  an  intermediate 
purgatory  before  the  grave.  And  what  a  slough  it  is,"  he 
adds,  "no  man  can  gauge  who  has  not  waded  therein,  as 
some  of  us  have  done,  up  to  the  very  neck,  for  long  years." 

"A  volume  of  dull,  squalid  horror  —  a  horror  of  great 
darkness,  gradually  obscuring  all  the  light  of  day  from  the 
heart  of  the  sufferer  —  might  be  written  from  the  simple, 
prosaic  experiences  of  the  ragged  fellows  you  meet  every 
day  in  the  street." 

And  is  all  this  nothing?  One  of  our  Bishops,  not  given 
to  exaggeration,  says  that  "the  zones  of  enormous  wealth 
and  degrading  poverty,  unless  carefully  considered,  will 
presently  generate  a  tornado,  which,  when  the  storm  clears, 
may  leave  a  good  deal  of  wreckage  behind."  * 

Such  is  the  state  of  the  present;  and,  if  we  do  not 
grapple  with  its  evils,  must  not  the  future  be  far  more 
terrible?  Consider  these  four  facts:  — 

First,  the  country  is  being  more  and  more  depleted;  the 
great  cities  are  becoming  more  and  more  densely  over- 
crowded; and  in  great  cities  there  is  always  a  tendency  to 
the  deterioration  of  manhood  morally,  physically,  and  spir- 
itually. 

Secondly,  our  population  is  increasing  at  the  rate  of 
nearly  one  thousand  a  day,  and  the  most  rapid  increase  is 
among  the  most  destitute  and  unfit. 

Thirdly,  in  spite  of  all  that  temperance  reformers  have 
said  and  done,  drink  still  continues  to  be  the  chief  curse 
of  our  country,  the  awful  waste  of  its  resources,  the  utter 
ruin  of  tens  of  thousands  of  its  'sons;  and  even  the  prog- 
ress of  last  year  was  disgraced  by  an  ugly  rush  to  alcohol 
and  rum. 

•The  Bishop  of  Winchester. 


12  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Fourthly,  the  struggle  between  capital  and  labor,  the 
moneyed  classes  and  the  destitute,  the  employer  and  the 
employed,  the  union-man  and  the  non-unionist,  is  con- 
stantly assuming  proportions  more  menacing  and  more 
colossal,  so  that  in  this  last  year  it  has  daily  filled  the 
hearts  of  all  thinking  men  with  anxiety,  and  may  end  in  a 
crisis  such  as  shall  shake  to  its  very  foundations  the  struct- 
ure of  our  national  prosperity. 

To  face  these  perils,  to  grapple  with  these  difficulties, 
will  need  all  our  courage,  all  our  wisdom,  all  our  manhood, 
all  our  faith.  But,  if  we  meet  them  with  nearly  one  out  of 
every  ten  of  our  population  helplessly  sunk  in  pauperism 
or  sodden  with  drink,  or,  at  the  best,  steeped  in  grinding 
poverty,  what  will  happen  to  us?  We  are  truly  warned 
that  then  "the  vicious  habits  and  destitute  circumstances 
of  multitudes  make  it  certain  that,  without  some  kind  of 
extraordinary  help,  they  must  hunger  and  sin,  and  sin  and 
hunger,  until,  having  multiplied  their  kind  and  filled  up 
the  measure  of  their  miseries,  the  gaunt  fingers  of  death 
will  close  upon  them  and  terminate  their  wretchedness." 
While  we  are  waiting,  men  are  perishing  on  every  side! 

And,  all  this  being  so,   what   is  the  attitude  of  the 
nation  towards  this  state  of  things? 

The  attitude  of  some  —  let  us  hope  the  very  few  — 
is  simply  not  to  care  at  all;  to  live  in  pleasure  on  the 
earth,  and  be  wanton ;  to  have  hearts  as  fat  as  brawn,  and 
cold  as  ice,  and  hard  as  the  nether  millstone;  to  heap  up 
superfluous  and  often  ill-gotten  wealth,  to  be  hoarded  in 
acquisition,  squandered  in  luxury,  or  reserved  for  the  build- 
ing up  of  idle  families.  But  to  men  whose  immense 
riches  are  squandered,  in  all  but  an  insignificant  fraction, 
on  their  own  lusts  and  their  own  aggrandizement,  comes 


SOCIAL  AMELIORATION.  ^ 

the  stern,  strong  message  of  St.  James:  "Your  riches  are 
corrupted,  your  garments  are  moth-eaten.  Ye  have  lived 
delicately  on  the  earth,  and  taken  your  pleasure.  Ye  have 
nourished  your  hearts  in  a  day  of  slaughter." 

The  attitude  of  others  is  that  of  a  scornful  pity,  half 
cynical,  half  despairing.  Such  is  the  spirit  expressed  in 
these  lines  of  an  English  poet  respecting  the  wretched  and 
the  lost :  — 

In  dirt  and  sin  ye  all  were  born ; 

In  sin  and  dirt  ye  all  were  bred ; 

Not  yours  in  truth,  not  yours  to  scorn 

The  offal  which  is  food  and  bed. 

Take  gold ;  disperse  the  rich  man's  store  ; 

Take  it,  and  satisfy  your  need. 
Then  misbeget  some  millions  more 

For  our  posterity  to  feed. 
Wallow  until  your  lives  be  through, 
Satan's  godchildren,  take  your  due  ! 

That  spirit,  surely,  is  the  most  absolute  antithesis  to  the 
humility,  the  hope,  the  yearning  pity,  which  should  actuate 
the  Christian's  life. 

The  attitude  of  others,  again,  is  stolid  acquiescence. 
They  are  weary  of  the  whole  thing;  sick  of  hearing  any- 
thing about  it.  It  annoys  them.  Tell  them  of  it,  and 
they  shrug  their  shoulders  with  an  impatient  "What  can 
we  do?"  Ask  them  for  help,  and  they  have  "so  many 
claims"  that  they  practically  give  to  none.  Press  the 
claim,  and  they  resent  it  as  a  personal  insult.  Suggest 
apian,  and  they  will  call  it  "Utopian."  Describe  a  case 
of  anguish,  and  they  will  call  you  "sensational."  Take 
part  in  a  public  effort,  and  they  will  sneer  at  you  as  "self- 
advertising."  The  one  thing  they  believe  in  is  selfish 


!4  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

laissez  faire.  Things  will  last  their  time,  and  that  is  all 
they  care  about.  They  grow  too  indolent  and  too  selfish 
to  care  about  anything  but  their  own  indulgences  and  their 
own  ease. 

The  attitude  of  others  is  at  least  a  tender,  if  a  some- 
what despairing,  pity.  They  would  fain  stretch  out  a  help- 
ing hand  if  they  knew  how.  They  say,  with  the  good 
Bishop  of  Wakefield:  — 

O  brother,  treading  ever-darkening  ways, 

O  sister,  whelmed  in  ever-deepening  care, 
Would  God  we  might  unfold  before  your  gaze 

Some  vision  of  the  pure  and  true  and  fair ! 
Better  to  know,  though  sadder  things  be  known ; 

Better  to  see,  though  tears  half  blind  the  sight, 
Than  thraldom  to  the  sense,  and  heart  of  stone, 

And  horrible  contentment  with  the  night. 

And  how  can  we  be  blamed  if,  indeed,  our  individual  pity 
does  take  a  tinge  of  despair?  Almost  every  week  there 
come  to  my  door  men  —  perfect  strangers  —  asking  for 
money  or  asking  me  to  find  them  work.  What  can  I,  what 
can  any  man  do,  for  such  cases?  To  find  work  is  of  course 
impossible:  to  give  money  to  all  such  chance  mendicants 
is  not  only  impossible,  but  would  merely  feed  the  sources 
of  misery  and  do  positive  harm.  The  case  lies  wholly 
beyond  the  reach  of  such  isolated  and  often  pernicious 
almsgiving.  It  needs  the  brave  effort  of  a  whole  nation. 
It  needs  the  courageous  self-denial  of  the  whole  Church. 
It  needs  the  hearty  co-operation  of  all  true  Christian  men. 
What,  then,  is  England  doing  in  this  direction? 
Legislatively,  I  fear,  very  little;  and  scarcely  anything 
effectual,  unless  it  be  effectual  to  produce  Blue-books  full 
of  damning  evidence,  and  then  leave  them  to  moulder  on 


SOCIAL  AMELIORATION.  j^ 

dusty  shelves.  When  a  deputation  of  the  destitute  went  to 
a  great  statesmaa,  all  he  could  answer  was  that  he  knew 
their  sorrows,  and  pitied  them,  but  did  not  know  what  to 
do.  Our  fathers  paid  ^20,000,000  to  emancipate  black 
slaves;  but  our  own  countrymen  we  leave  to  perish,  by 
myriads,  in  a  lower  and  more  helpless  wretchedness. 

And  what  is  the  Church  of  England  doing?  Pastorally, 
she  is  doing  a  great  and  a  very  blessed  work, —  a  work  most 
noble,  most  self-denying,  of  wholly  inestimable  value;  but 
I  only  echo  the  universal  experience,  and  the  most  impar- 
tial testimony,  when  I  say  that  for  aggressive,  for  mission 
purposes,  to  recover  lost  ground,  to  keep  pace  with  the 
running  tide  of  population,  to  plunge  into  the  very  depths 
of  misery  and  pluck  the  perishing  from  their  destruction, 
to  dig  down  to  the  roots  of  vice  and  destitution  and  stub 
them  up,  she  needs  a  more  burning  enthusiasm,  a  more 
powerful  and  unencumbered  organization. 

It  is  with  that  conviction  that  I  have  tried  for  some  time 
to  urge  upon  the  Church  the  establishment  of  new  agencies 
—  call  them  Brotherhoods  or  what  you  will,  bind  them  by 
temporary  vows,  or  leave  them  unbound,  as  you  will  —  to 
live  in  the  midst  of  the  people,  to  come  face  to  face  with 
them  in  their  lowest  slums,  to  grapple  hand  to  hand,  to 
wrestle  shoulder  to  shoulder,  with  the  evil  conditions  by 
which  they  are  surrounded. 

Even  to  Him  whose  eyes  are  as  a  flame  of  fire,  it  would 
not,  I  trust,  be  true  to  say  that  we  have  been  like  the 
Priest  and  the  Levite,  only  glancing  at  the  wounded  man, 
and  then,  absorbed  in  our  formal  functions,  passing  by  on 
the  other  side,  while  we  leave  the  Samaritan  to  pour  oil 
and  wine  into  his  wounds.  But,  whatever  be  the  cause, 
and  whosesoever  be  the  blame,  two  things  are  fatally  true, 


j6  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

I  fear,  alike  of  the  Church  of  England  and  of  almost  every 
other  religious  body. 

The  one  is  that,  in  multitudes  of  cities  and  parishes, 
alike  in  the  town  and  in  the  country,  we  have  practically 
lost  all  effectual  hold  on  the  mass  of  the  working  classes, 
so  that  not  one-tenth  of  them  frequent  our  Churches,  not 
three  per  cent,  are  partakers  of  our  Communions. 

The  other  is  that,  while  to  our  honor  there  are  mul- 
titudes of  good  societies  and  benevolent  agencies,  they 
affect,  for  the  most  part,  but  a  fraction  of  the  population. 
Many,  perhaps  most  of  them,  are  struggling  for -funds;  a 
large  part  of  their  work  is  hampered  and  swallowed  up  in 
their  expenses;  they  are  working  in  a  sporadic  and  discon- 
tinuous manner;  they  achieve  a  partial  improvement,  but 
accomplish  no  general  deliverance.  They  do  but  touch  a 
spot  here  and  there  on  the  outermost  circumference  of  the 
ever-widening  circle;  they  do  not  clear  away  the  dense  and 
poisonous  forest,  but,  as  it  has  been  expressed,  "only  peck 
at  the  outside  of  the  endless  tangle  of  monotonous  under- 
growth." What  they  do  is  a  thing  for  which  to  thank  God; 
they  do  alleviate  sorrow,  and  prevent  the  still  wider  spread 
of  its  fretting  lichen.  I  for  one  have  rejoiced  to  do  what 
I  could,  in  many  ways  and  in  many  places, —  to  give  labor, 
and  time,  and  effort, —  to  plead  their  cause  and  to  swell 
their  funds.  If  —  to  use  St.  Paul's  expression  —  I  may 
speak  as  a  fool,  I  do  not  think  that  many  of  the  clergy 
have  been  more  desirous  than  I  have  to  promote  the  bless- 
ing of  the  poor.  We  have,  too,  our  own  Church  Army.  It 
has  had,  from  the  first,  my  most  cordial  sympathy,  and  such 
help  as  it  was  in  my  power  to  lend. 

But  the  movement  with  which  the  thoughts  of  many  are 
now  filled,  though  religious  in  its  origin,  is  predominantly 


SOCIAL   AMELIORATION, 


and  fundamentally  social  in  its  aims.  So  far  from  hinder- 
ing the  work  of  all  the  other  workers  for  good,  —  such  as 
the  brave  and  patient  clergy  in  East,  South,  and  North 
London,  Dr.  Barnardo,  Mr.  Mearns,  Mr.  Charrington,  Mr. 
Benjamin  Waugh,  the  Oxford  House,  Toynbee  Hall,  the 
various  school  and  college  Missions,  and  others,  —  so  far 
from  extinguishing  or  injuring  these,  my  hope  and  belief 
is  that  the  scheme  now  proposed  will,  in  every  way,  render 
their  special  efforts  more  effectual. 

But  there  are  multitudes  who  feel  convinced  that  some- 
thing more  resolute,  more  thorough,  more  centralized,  more 
systematic,  more  fundamental  than  any  existing  effort  is 
required,  if  we  are  to  obey  the  voice  which  is  ever  sound- 
ing to  us  across  the  centuries,  —  "Undo  the  heavy  burden; 
let  the  oppressed  go  free;  break  every  yoke;  deal  thy 
bread  to  the  hungry;  cover  the  naked  with  a  garment; 
hide  not  thyself  from  thy  own  flesh;  bind  up  the  broken- 
hearted; set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised.  Then  shall 
thou  be  called  the  repairer  of  the  breach,  the  restorer  of 
paths  to  dwell  in." 

You  are  all  aware  that  the  great  scheme  for  grappling 
with  the  want  and  misery  of  which  I  have  spoken  has  been 
put  before  the  world  by  the  head  of  the  Salvation  Army. 
I  have  examined  this  scheme.  I  have  been  deeply  stirred 
by  it.  In  my  best  judgment,  however  feeble  that  judgment 
may  be,  I  believe  it  to  be  full  of  promise  if  the  funds  are 
provided;  and,  therefore,  I  have  regarded,  and  still  regard 
it  to  be,  my  plain  Christian  duty  to  lend  to  it  the  best  aid 
in  my  power.  Had  any  scheme  so  large  been  proposed 
by  any  member  of  the  Church  of  England,  who  possessed 
either  the  power  or  the  means,  or  the  agencies  by  which  it 
could  be  carried  out,  I  should  have  done  my  very  utmost 


!g  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

to  further  it.  But  although  our  Church  has  mighty  wit- 
nesses, and  has  originated  many  noble  efforts,  I  regard 
this  effort  as  supplementing,  not  as  interfering  with,  her 
labors;  as  preparing  for,  not  hindering,  her  work.  It  has 
not  pleased  God  as  yet  to  call  obviously  to  the  front  from 
her  communion  any  one  gifted  with  the  large  hopefulness, 
the  genius  for  organization,  and  the  holy  confidence  and 
courage  which  can  alone  make  a  deep  inroad  into  the  bor- 
ders of  the  Kingdom  of  Darkness. 

This  scheme,  as  I  have  said, —  though  no  Christian 
scheme  can  be  wholly  dislinked  from  religion, —  is  yet 
primarily  social.  It  is  not  intended,  as  such,  to  promote 
the  work  of  the  Salvation  Army,  but  the  work  of  the 
whole  Church  of  God.  It  has  been  felt  that  Christianity 
has  a  duty  here,  now,  on  earth,  in  this  life,  to  men's 
bodies  as  well  as  to  their  souls.  It  has  even  been  felt 
that,  if  we  disregard  the  hunger  and  misery  of  their 
bodies,  we  cannot  effectually  touch  or  reach  their  souls.  Is 
the  scheme,  then,  to  be  thrown  aside  out  of  sectarian  jeal- 
ousies and  ecclesiastical  prejudice,  because  it  emanates 
from  the  Salvation  Army,  though  not  pertaining  directly 
to  their  religious  crusade?  If  any  think  so,  I  blame  them 
not;  but  I  for  one  stand  here,  in  the  presence  of  Christ  my 
Saviour,  and  say  that  I  cannot  share  their  views.  Would 
such  aloofness  be  in  accordance  with  the  parable  of  the  Good 
Samaritan?  or  with  the  tests  of  pity  and  mercy  on  which, 
and  not  on  ecclesiastical  differences,  Christ  said  the  Great 
Assize  would  turn?  or  with  that  definition  of  pure  religion 
and  undefiled  before  God  and  the  Father,  which  says  that 
it  is  "to  visit  the  fatherless  and  the  widow  in  their  afflic- 
tion, and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the  world  "? 
Some  years  ago  I  uttered  a  note  of  warning  respecting 


SOCIAL  AMELIORATION.  ICj 

some  of  the  views  and  methods  of  the  Salvation  Army, 
and  the  perils  to  which  it  was  liable.  On  those  points 
my  views  have  not  changed.  Except  in  the  great  funda- 
mental truths  of  Christianity,  on  which  all  Christians 
are  agreed,  I  differ  perhaps  even  more  widely  from  the 
Salvationists  than  many  of  my  brethren.  Nevertheless  two 
things  I  plainly  see.  The  one,  that  God  has  not  left  them 
unblessed.  Another,  that  there  is  much  which  we  might 
profitably  learn  from  the  methods  which  have  enabled  them 
to  accomplish,  in  so  short  time,  so  great  a  work.  A  few 
years  ago  there  was  no  Salvation  Army;  and  its  present 
leader  was  an  unknown  Dissenting  Minister,  without  name, 
or  fame,  or  rank,  or  wealth,  or  influence.  To-day  the 
Salvation  Army,  growing  like  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  has 
9,000  officers  and  13,000  voluntary  workers,  many  of  them 
in  the  flower  of  their  youth  and  youthful  energy,  who  have 
tested  in  many  ways  their  sincerity,  and  given  their  hearts 
to  God.  It  has,  all  over  the  world,  nearly  3,000  centres  of 
work;  and  it  raises,  in  large  measure  from  the  contribu- 
tions of  the  poor,  an  income  of  nearly  ^800,000  a  year. 
Apart  from  its  directly  religious  work,  it  has  thirty  Rescue 
Homes  for  fallen  women,  five  nightly  Shelters,  three  Food 
Depots,  and  eighty  officers  working  in  deep  poverty  in  the 
poorest  of  the  slums. 

These,  surely,  are  credentials  which  even  malice  must 
blush  to  deny.  I  believe  that  God  has  raised  up  these 
humble  workers  to  effect  now  an  immense  social  ameliora- 
tion. Are  we,  then,  to  stand  coldly,  finically,  critically 
aside,  because  we  are  too  refined  and  nice  to  touch  this 
work  with  one  of  our  fingers? 

For  myself,  I  should  have  thought  that  I  failed  griev- 
ously in  my  duty  if  insult  or  love  of  ease  or  self-interest 


20  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

made  me  hold  aloof  from  any  effort  which  Christ,  the  Lord 
of  our  lives,  were  He  here  in  visible  presence  among  us, 
would,  I  believe  from  my  inmost  heart,  approve.  But,  if 
you  desire  weightier  evidence  than  mine,  let  me  quote  to 
you  the  testimony  of  two  of  the  great  dead,  whose  praise  is 
in  all  the  churches. 

"The  Salvation  Army,"  said  Bishop  Lightfoot,  the  wis- 
est and  most  learned  of  our  Prelates,  "has  at  least  recalled 
us  to  the  lost  ideal  of  the  work  of  the  Church, —  the  uni- 
versal compulsion  of  the  souls  of  men."  "It  fills  me  with 
shame,"  said  Canon  Liddon,  the  most  eloquent  of  our 
preachers,  after  attending  a  Salvation  Army  meeting,  "I 
feel  guilty  when  I  think  of  myself,  to  think  of  these  poor 
people,  with  their  imperfect  grasp  of  truth!  And  yet 
what  a  contrast  between  what  they  do  and  we  are  doing! 
How  little  effect  do  we  produce  compared  with  that  which 
was  palpable  at  that  meeting!  I  take  shame  to  myself 
when  I  think  of  it." 

God  knows,  I  have  no  desire  whatever  but  to  fulfil  the 
tasks  He  lays  upon  me;  and  I  may  assume  that  I  am 
speaking  at  least  to  some  serious  men  and  women,  who 
will  not  think  themselves  injured  if  their  attention  is 
asked  to  a  matter  of  national  significance,  which  concerns 
every  one  of  us,  not  as  Christians  only,  but  even  as  citi- 
zens and  lovers  of  our  country. 

Here,  then,  a  proposal  of  which  you  have  probably 
all  learnt  the  general  outlines,  is  laid  before  us.  How 
shall  we  receive  it? 

There  are  various  ways  of  receiving  any  and  every  pro- 
posal for  good.  It  is  well  for  us  to  consider  them,  and  to 
question  our  own  hearts  faithfully  respecting  them,  that 
we  may  be  sincere  with  ourselves  and  before  God. 


SOCIAL  AMELIORATION.  2l 

One  way  —  the  simplest  and  commonest,  when  any 
effort  to  do  good  is  brought  to  our  notice  —  is  (as  I  said)  to 
ignore  it,  and  let  it  disturb  neither  our  dinners  nor  our 
sleep.  To  those  who  thus  deal  with  it,  I  have  nothing  to 
say. 

Another  way  is  to  talk  about  it,  then  let  it  drop,  and 
do  absolutely  nothing.  To  those  who  adopt  this  line,  I 
have  nothing  to  say. 

Another  way  is  to  examine  it,  and,  if  convinced  that 
it  will  do  no  good,  deliberately  to  reject  it.  That  is  per- 
fectly manly.  It  is  a  course  which  every  one  may  take 
without  blame.  Let  each  man  conscientiously  form  his 
own  opinion;  let  each  be  fully  persuaded  in  his  own  mind. 
Only  let  our  decision  be  conscientious;  let  it  not  be 
biassed  by  petty  or  by  secret  motives.  To  those  who,  hav- 
ing examined  the  proposals  made  in  "Darkest  England," 
regard  them  —  if  they  can  regard  them  —  as  either  nugatory 
or  pernicious,  I  have,  of  course,  nothing  to  say.  They 
may  be  quite  as  good,  and  better  judges,  than  I  am.  They 
are  responsible  for  their  opinions  as  I  am  for  mine,  but  it 
is  to  God  and  not  to  man. 

But  another  way,  alas !  is  one  far  too  common  when 
any  good  work  whatever  is  suggested, —  even  if  it  be  cast- 
ing out  devils, —  especially  if  it  be  by  one  who  followeth 
not  after  us.  It  is  a  way  to  which  all  of  us  are  often 
tempted.  It  is  to  sneer,  to  object,  to  misrepresent,  to  find 
fault,  to  pick  holes;  to  say,  "Your  plan  has  nothing  new 
in  it";  to  say,  "Who  are  you?";  to  riot  in  offensive  per- 
sonalities; to  call  the  scheme  visionary  or  a  dodge  of 
vanity;  to  damn  with  faint  praise;  to  throw  cold  water 
upon  it;  to  smother  it  in  the  wet  blanket  of  cynicism; 
"to  just  hint  a  fault  and  hesitate  dislike";  to  snatch  up 


22  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

any  one  of  the  millionfold  varieties  of  excuse,  opposition, 
and  half-hearted  selfishness  which  the  world,  the  flesh, 
and  the  devil  readily  supply  to  every  one  of  us  who,  on 
any  occasion,  desires  to  veneer  the  slothfulness  of  his 
own  callous  conscience.  This  is  the  way  of  those  — 
and  they  may  be  counted  by  tens  of  thousands  —  who  do 
not  mean  to  help  in  this  or  in  any  scheme,  but  to  keep 
their  money  and  their  ease  to  themselves,  and  to  let  the 
sins  of  the  world  go  on  unheeded  till  the  pit  swallow  them, 
and  until  upon  their  own  sensual  selfishness  crashes  the 
awful  message,  "Thou  fool!  this  night!" 

(e)  Yet  another  way,  not  quite  so  base  and  vulgar  as 
this,  but  yet  sufficiently  ignoble,  is  to  leave  others  to  bear 
the  brunt;  to  stand  aside  till  the  forlorn  hope  has  been 
killed,  and  then  walk  triumphantly  through  the  open 
breach;  to  wait  till  there  is  no  more  opposition;  to  be 
timid,  safe,  cautious,  hesitating,  eminently  respectable, 
immensely  careful  of  our  own  personal  interests,  infinitely 
on  our  guard  against  facing  insult  and  opposition. 
"Fools,"  the  poet  says,  "rush  in,  where  angels  fear  to 
tread."  Yes,  but  it, has  been  answered,  the  safe  and  timid 
angels  are  sometimes  glad  enough  to  follow  when  the  poor 
fools,  with  sweat  of  brow  and  anguish  of  .heart,  have  forced 
the  way. 

(/)  But  the  last  way  —  and  I  trust  that  this  is  the  way 
which  we  shall  adopt,  if,  on  examination,  we  can  approve 
this  scheme  of  trying  to  uplift  the  unemployed  from  their 
misery — is  to  support  it  by  our  influence;  to  give  to  it  of 
our  means.  You  will  see  that  it  is  a  scheme  immense  and 
far-reaching,  a  scheme  which,  if  it  please  God  to  bless  it 
with  success,  may  bring  help  and  hope  to  thousands  of 
the  helpless  and  the  hopeless, —  who  have  been  made 


SOCIAL  AMELIORATION.  23 

helpless  and  hopeless  by  the  terrible  conditions  of  society 
—  but  for  every  one  of  whom  Christ  died.  To  begin  the 
scheme  in  desperate  earnest,  ;£  100,000  are  wanted.  What 
is  that  to  the  wealth  of  England?  The  annual  expenditure 
of  London  alone  is  estimated  at  ^200,000,000.  What 
is  a  2,oooth  fraction  of  this  ?  A  mere  drop  in  the 
ocean !  Not  one  tenth  of  what  is  wasted  every  year,  to 
the  destruction  of  men's  souls  and  bodies,  in  beer,  and 
rum,  and  gin.  In  1889  the  income  tax  assessments  were 
^681,000,000.  In  1884  it  was  found  that  the  net  wealth 
had  increased  by  1 30  per  cent.  There  are  a  hundred  men 
in  England  who  might  immortalize  themselves  by  such  a 
gift,  and  bring  showers  of  blessing  on  their  own  souls,  and 
yet  not  have  one  gorgeous  luxury  or  one  boundless  super- 
fluity the  less.  There  are  tens  of  thousands  of  men  and 
women  in  England  who  could  each  give  ^100  this  very 
day,  and  never  miss  it  at  the  year's  end.  I  leave  the  ques- 
tion to  your  consciences.  Will  it  not  be  a  desperate  shame 
to  England,  and  an  awfully  lost  opportunity,  if,  for  lack 
of  an  infinitely  small  self-denial  on  our  part,  any  scheme 
which  gives  so  hopeful  a  promise  of  social  amelioration, 
should  be,  like  a  broken  purpose,  lost  in  air? 

But,  in  conclusion,  you  say,  "The  scheme  may  fail." 
Alas!  do  I  not  know  it?  Is  not  the  world  full  of  worn-out 
enthusiasms,  and  defeated  efforts,  and  broken  hearts,  even 
as  the  desert  is  full  of  the  bleaching  bones  of  them  that 
have  traversed  it?  Has  not  many  a  full  rejoicing  river  of 
human  sympathy  been  lost  in  the  muddy  ooze,  and  hardly 
seemed  to  fertilize  the  barren  sands?  Have  not  many 
thousands  of  the  weak  waves  of  human  effort  been  dashed 
into  mist  upon  the  wind,  into  scum  upon  the  shore,  by  the 
hard  and  jagged  rocks  of  selfishness,  and  greed,  and  sin? 


24  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Yes,  the  effort  may  fail;  for  very  fallible  are  the  judg- 
ments, and  "toilsome  and  incomplete"  is  the  best  work  of 
man.  "Toilsome  and  incomplete,"  says  the  late  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's,  "full  of  pangs,  and  disgust,  and  disappoint- 
ment, has  often  been  the  work  of  genius.  Toilsome  and 
incomplete,  the  effort  of  the  leader  of  a  great  movement  for 
the  overthrow  of  a  wrong,  for  the  welfare  of  his  brethren, 
for  the  deliverance  and  happiness  of  a  people,  amid  un- 
popularity and  suspicion,  the  delays  and  contradictions  and 
provocations  of  petty  and  unrelenting  adversaries,  or  un- 
worthy friends.  Toilsome  and  incomplete  the  labor  of 
him  who,  in  daily  contact  with  all  that  is  horrible  and 
desperate,  spends  a  life  to  bring  the  mercies  and  peace  of 
Christ  down  to  the  coarse  misery  which  festers  around  all 
our  brilliant  capitals."  Yes,  the  scheme  may  fail.  Well, 
but,  if  to  die  amid  disloyalty  and  hatred  be  failure,  St. 
Paul  failed.  If  to  perish  at  the  stake  be  failure,  all  the 
martyrs  failed;  if  to  die  amid  the  howl  of  the  world's  dis- 
approval be  failure,  Savonarola,  and  Luther,  and  Whit  eft  eld 
failed.  If  to  die  on  the  Cross,  with  all  the  priests  and  all 
the  mob  jibing  at  Him  and  insulting  Him,  be  failure, 
then  the  Lord  Jesus  failed.  Yes,  the  effort  may  fail;  but 
fear,  and  timidity,  and  jealousy,  and  suspicion,  and  indo- 
lence, and  impatience,  and  despair  are  counsellors  who  will 
find  multitudes  to  listen  to  them;  and  as  for  me  I  will 
listen  to  the  counsellings  —  the  wiser,  the  better,  the 
nobler  counsellings  —  of  hope.  And  failure, —  what  is 
failure?  Cannot  we  get  behind  the  word?  Are  none  of  us 
brave  enough  or  noble  enough,  in  trying  to  do  God's  work, 
to  prefer  such  failure  to  the  most  gorgeous  success  in 
pleasing  the  world,  and  making  truce  with  the  devil? 
Failure? 


SOCIAL   AMELIORATION.  2$ 

Speak,  history  !  who  are  life's  victors? 

Unfold  thy  long  annals,  and  say, 
Are  they  those  whom  the  world  called  the  victors, 

Who  won  the  success  of  a  day  ? 
The  martyrs  or  Nero?     The  Spartans, 

Who  fell  at  Thermopylae's  tryst, 

Or  the    Persians   and   Xerxes?     His   Judges  or   Socrates?     Pilate  or 
Christ  ? 

Yes!  the  plan  may  fail,  but  I  for  one  mean  to  pray,  and 
to  hope,  that  it  will  succeed;  and  the  question  for  each  of 
us  is,  about  every  good  effort  which  is  made,  Shall  it  fail 
through  my  cowardice,  my  greed,  my  supineness,  my  pru- 
dential cautiousness,  my  petty  prejudices,  my  selfish  con- 
ventionality? If,  on  examining  this  plan  in  the  light  of 
conscience,  we  see  in  it  any  element  and  augury  of  effi- 
ciency in  the  removal  of  the  deadly  evils  which  lie  at  the 
heart  of  our  civilization,  we  are  in  duty  bound  to  do  our 
utmost  to  help  it  forward.  But  how,  if  we  conscientiously 
disapprove  of  it?  Are  we  then  free  from  obligations? 
Nay:  then  we  are  in  duty  bound  to.  propose,  or  to  for- 
ward, something  better.  One  way  only  is  contemptible 
and  accursed;  that  is,  to  make  it  our  excuse  for  envy, 
malice,  depreciation.  He  that  heareth,  let  him  hear;  and 
he  that  forbeareth,  let  him  forbear.  But  God  shall  be 
the  Judge  between  us;  and  His  Voice  says  in  Scripture, 
"If  thou  forbear  to  deliver  them  that  are  drawn  unto  death, 
and  those  that  are  ready  to  be  slain;  if  thou  sayest, 
Behold,  we  knew  it  not;  doth  not  He  that  pondereth  the 
heart  consider  it?  And  He  that  keepeth  thy  soul,  doth 
not  He  know  it?  And  shall  not  He  render  to  every  man 
according  to  his  work?" 


NATIONAL  PERILS. 

"And  in  the  morning  ye  say,  It  will  be  foul  weather  to-day:  for  the  sky  is 
red  and  lowring.  O  ye  hypocrites,  ye  can  discern  the  face  of  the  sky;  but  can 
ye  not  discern  the  signs  of  the  times  ?  " —  MATT.  xvi.  3. 

PROBLEMS  of  the  gravest  import  await  our  solution,— 
problems  which  need  all  our  nerve,  all  our  determination, 
all  our  courage,  all  our  hope,  and  which  affect  the  life 
and  duty  of  us  all.  It  is  possible  to  paint  the  condition 
of  the  present  age  in  two  very  different  ways;  and  this 
has  recently  been  done  by  the  master  hands  of  two  of  the 
greatest  sons  of  this  century.  The  Poet  Laureate  in  his 
new  "Locksley  Hall"  has  drawn  it  in  dark  colors,  as  it 
might  appear  to  the  mind  of  an  aged  and  disenchanted  man: 
the  late  Prime  Minister  has,  in  reply,  drawn  it  in  its  most 
glowing  lights  of  hope  and  gladness.  I  have  tried  to  show 
elsewhere  that  there  is  nothing  antagonistic  in  these  views. 
There  is  one  series  of  facts  which,  if  we  contemplated  them 
exclusively,  would  make  us  hopeless  pessimists.  There  is 
another  series  of  facts  which,  taken  by  themselves,  would 
fill  us  with  rose-colored  optimism.  But.  apart  from  either 
picture  new  conditions  are  arising  round  us  of  endless  sig- 
nificance,—  conditions  which  need  immediate  and  strenuous 
action,  and  which,  unless  the  nation  rises  to  the  true  mean- 
ing of  the  situation,  may  be  pregnant  with  individual  and 
national  disaster,  such  as  it  is  hardly  possible  for  the 
imagination  to  conceive.  And  these  evils  cannot  be  reme- 
died, these  perils  cannot  be  averted,  except  by  a  nation 
which  is  thoroughly  in  earnest ;  by  a  nation  prepared  for 


NATIONAL  PERILS.  2/ 

higher  thinking  and  plainer  living  than  England  is  at 
present;  by  a  nation  which  will  rise,  with  heroic  self- 
denial,  to  face  the  extremity  of  its  own  enormous  needs. 
It  is  on  the  way  in  which  the  problems  of  the  present 
touch  every  one  of  us  individually  that  I  must  speak 
to-day.  The  man  must  be  indeed  callous  and  selfish  who 
can  think  of  the  menace  of  the  sky  without  a  heavy  heart. 
To  the  lounger,  the  idler,  the  frivolous  waster  of  time;  to 
the,  drunkard,  the  glutton,  the  dissolute;  to  the  hypocrite, 
the  money-maker,  the  Mammon-worshipper;  to  all  who 
basely  sit  at  the  feast  of  life,  and  "try  to  slink  away  without 
paying  the  reckoning,"  the  facts  should  be  full  of  signifi- 
cance; and  would  that  these  my  words  could  have  all  the 
solemnity  of  that  voice  which  he  who  heard  the  Apocalypse 
heard  cry  in  heaven,  "Woe  to  the  inhabiters  of  the  earth!  " 
I  will  say  nothing  of  that  red  glare  flung  on  the  lowering 
horizon  by  the  menace  of  European  war.  I  know  not 
whether  these  rumors  of  war  are  only  like  the  waves  that 
"roll  shoreward,  and  roar  and  strike  and  are  dissipated," 
or  whether  they  mean  a  tide  which  shall  redden  a  hundred 
fields  with  blood.  When  we  see  mighty  nations  armed  to 
the  teeth  against  each  other,  exhausting  their  resources, 
squandering  their  strength,  swelling  their  national  debts, 
in  these  costly  and  gigantic  follies;  when  we  read  of  these 
frightful  inventions,  explosives  of  unknown  force,  guns  of 
infinite  destructiveness,  torpedoes  which  go  far  under  the 
sea  to  blow  up  navies;  when  we  see  man's  ingenuity  ex- 
hausted in  the  elaboration  of  devilish  enginery,  and  inter- 
national jealousy  adding  its  dread  quota  to  the  miseries 
caused  by  commercial  rivalries;  when  we  see  in  Europe 
at  this  moment  at  least  twelve  and  a  half  millions  of 
armed  men  doomed  to  lives  of  unproductive  menace,  amid 


28  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

groaning  and  tax-burdened  populations,  I  ask  you  which 
seems  most  likely  to  happen  in  our  days, —  the  dawn  of 
that  millennium, 

When  the  war  drum  throbs  no  longer,  and  the  battle  flags  are  furled, 
In  the  parliament  of  man,  the  federation  of  the  world, 

or,  rather,  that  dim,  awful  Armageddon-battle  of  the  last 
days,  when  the  hosts  of  evil  shall  concentrate  all  their 
wrath  for  one  last  and  deadly  struggle  against  the  hosts  of 
light. 

But,  passing  over  this  question,  there  are  two  dan- 
gers which  here  in  England  are  already  upon  us,  and 
which,  if  we  care  at  all  for  the  prosperity  and  for  the 
future  interests  of  this  nation,  need  all  our  consideration. 
One  is  the  unstable  equilibrium  of  our  whole  commercial 
system, —  the  fact  that  the  so-called  national  prosperity 
enriches  not  the  many,  but  the  few;  the  fact  that  our  in- 
dustrial organization  shows  signs  of  perishing  by  its  own 
inherent  vices.  We  are  constantly  told  of  the  wealth  of 
England;  of  our  national  income  of  one  thousand  millions 
a  year;  of  the  fact  that  out  of  this  income,  according  to  the 
most  eminent  statisticians,  we  are  yearly  saving  and  invest- 
ing two  hundred  and  thirty-five  millions;  the  fact  that 
while  every  philanthropic  society  is  struggling  and  many 
efforts  for  good  are  bankrupt,  yet,  when  some  huge  brewing 
business  is  to  be  sold,  hundreds  rush  forward  ignobly  emu- 
lous, and  a  hundred  million  pounds  is  at  once,  and  with 
passionate  eagerness,  imploringly  put  forward  to  buy  a  share 
in  so  blessed  a  concern  and  to  participate  in  the  huge  gains 
which  it  brings  in  amid  the  general  decay!  Who  enjoys 
the  luxury  of  this  enormous  mass  of  wealth?  The  few,  and 
not  the  people.  We  have  a  population  of  over  36,000,000, 


NATIONAL  PERILS.  29 

but  out  of  this  population  30!  millions  belong  to  the  lower- 
middle  and  poorer  classes,  and  their  quota  of  the  national 
income,  as  calculated  by  the  most  competent  authority, 
shows  a  miserably  small  average  for  the  total  weekly  ex- 
penditure. Clearly,  the  existence  of  fabulous  wealth  in  the 
country  no  more  proves  general  prosperity  than  the  hectic 
flush  upon  the  cheek  of  consumption  is  a  sign  of  health. 
It  was  only  for  a  brief  space  that  steam  and  machinery 
added  to  the  general  well-being.  Latterly  it  has  heaped 
riches  into  a  small  number  of  hands,  and  done  nothing  to 
popularize  the  use  of  them;  and,  now  that  it  has  glutted  the 
markets,  and  diminished  the  profits  of  the  capitalists,  whole 
classes  of  Englishmen  are  at  this  moment  engaged  in  a 
terrible  struggle  to  hold  back  by  the  ears  the  wolf  of  pov- 
erty. The  retail  tradesmen  are  in  a  state  of  depression; 
the  tenant  farmers  are  in  many  parts  of  England  on  the 
verge  of  bankruptcy;  many  of  the  clergy  are  in  the  anguish 
of  destitution;  innumerable  clerks,  sempstresses,  and  shop- 
men are  working  many  hours  a  day  on  the  merest  pittances, 
and,  if  even  for  a  month  they  fall  out  of  the  race,  it  is  harder 
and  harder  for  them  to  find  employment.  Work  grows  more 
and  more  uncertain  and  irregular;  crowds  of  dock  laborers 
madly  struggle  at  the  dock  gates  for  the  poor  labor 
which  only  a  few  of  them  can  obtain.  The  number  of 
unemployed  in  England  is  increasing,  and  in  all  probability 
will  increase.  It  is  now  numbered  by  thousands.  What  will 
you  do  when  it  is  numbered  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  and 
when  with  the  pauperism  deepens  also  the  fierce  and  sullen 
discontent?  We  are  complacently  told  that,  while  our  pop- 
ulation has  increased  fivefold,  our  wealth  has  .increased 
sevenfold:  the  fact  remains  that  while  there  is  more  wealth 
there  is  more  general  misery.  There  are  in  London  at  this 


3Q  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

moment  80,000  paupers,  and  half  a  million  are  at  hand- 
grips with  destitution  and  are  helped  by  charity.  In  this 
dreadful  city  alone  there  are  as  many  fallen  women, —  mis- 
erablest  and  most  fallen  of  the  human  race  except  the 
wretches  who  have  made  them  what  they  are, —  as  many, 
we  are  told,  in  this  city  alone  "as  the  whole  population  of 
Norwich;  as  many  known  criminals  as  the  whole  population 
of  Huntingdon;  as  many  homeless  nomads  who  live  on  the 
verge  of  famine  as  twice  over  the  population  of  the  town  of 
Nottingham."  Is  not  this  a  warning  against  the  selfishness 
of  luxury  and  of  comfort-worship?  Is  it  not  possible  that 
under  such  conditions  all  they  that  are  fat  upon  earth  and 
have  eaten  and  drunken  may,  in  the  warning  of  Scripture, 
have  only  been  heaping  up  treasure  for  the  last  days,  and 
nourishing  their  hearts  as  in  a  day  of  slaughter?* 

And,  besides  this  congestion  of  wealth  in  the  hands 
of  a  few,  the  other  grave  peril  to  which  the  thoughts  of 
many  Englishmen  are  now  being  awakened,  and  that  on 
every  side,  is  the  growth  of  population.  It  has  increased 
more  since  the  year  1800  than  it  did  for  fully  six  hundred 
years  after  the  Conquest.  The  Saxon  races  of  Europe  now 
double  their  number  in  every  seventy  years.  In  India 
myriads  are  scarcely  ever  free  from  the  pangs  of  hunger. 
In  twenty-five  years. more  the  United  States  of  America, 
that  great  outlet  for  emigration,  will  be  fully  occupied  by 
its  hundred  millions  of  inhabitants.  Long  before  another 
century  has  run  its  course  the  economical  conditions  of  the 
whole  world  will  be  fundamentally  altered,  and  on  this 
ground  alone  there  must  be  some  immense  change  or  crisis 
in  the  history  of  our  race.  The  catastrophe  dreaded  by 

*  Many  of  the  facts  set  forth  in  this  chapter  hive  been  powerfully  stated  in  recent  works, 
iuch  as  Mr.  J.  Cotter  Morrison's  "Service  of  War"  and  Mr.  Arnold  Morley's  "  Problems  of 
Great  Citiei." 


NATIONAL  PERILS.  3! 

some  writers  in  the  last  century  has  only  been  staved  off 
for  a  time  by  the  unforeseen  importation  of  food;  but  this 
resource  is  far  from  inexhaustible,  nor  has  science  discov- 
ered a  means  of  increasing  the  supply  of  food  in  the  same 
geometrical  ratio  as  the  increase  of  population.  As  one 
writer  expressed  it,  "the  human  race  in  old  countries  is 
being  jammed  into  an  impasse,  from  which  there  is  no 
escape  until  Nature  take  the  matter  in  hand."  But  how? 
Will  she  send  forth  God's  four  sore  judgments?  Will  the 
red  horse  of  war,  and  the  livid  horse  of  famine,  and  the 
black  horse  of  pestilence  be  let  loose  among  mankind?  Or 
is  the  shadow,  indeed,  reaching  that  line  on  the  dial-plate 
of  eternity  when  the  earth  shall  thrill  with  the  trumpet  of 
the  Archangel  and  with  the  voice  of  God? 

I  do  not  make  the  faintest  pretence  to  forecast  the  future. 
I  do  not  pretend  to  know  what  the  end  of  these  things  will 
be.  I  am  touching  on  this  point  solely  to  emphasize  our 
sense  of  individual  duty.  But  this  is  plain, —  that  this  stu- 
pendous increase  of  population  is  complicated  by  two  other 
elements  in  England  of  a  great  and  silent  revolution  which 
is  going  on  in  the  midst  of  us.  One  is  the  growth  of  great 
cities,  and  the  other  is  the  multiplication  of  the  unfit. 

No  one  who  has  a  grain  of  thoughtfulness  in  his  composi- 
tion can  dispute  the  facts  or  can  question  their  significance. 
r'The  population  of  England,  on  the  one  hand,  was  rural, 
and  is  become  urban;'  on  the  other  hand,  the  strong  are  iri 
danger  of  being  crowded  out  by  the  weak.  Of  the  first  of 
these  facts,  I  will  only  say  a  word.  Every  year  the  country 
is  more  depleted,  the  cities,  and,  above  all,  this  monstrous 
imposthume  of  London,  are  more  overcrowded.  London 
alone  adds  a  new  Exeter,  a  new  city  of  seventy  thousand, 
to  her  inhabitants  every  year.  If  things  go  on  like  this 


32  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

unchecked,  before  two  centuries  are  over  England  will  be 
mainly  one  huge,  intolerable  town,  "a  furious  centre  of 
prolific  vitality/' — the  curse  alike  of  the  physique  and 
morale  of  the  race. 

Take  the  other  serious  fact,  that  the  increase  is  prepon- 
derantly among  the  unfit.  The  tendency  of  civilization  is 
to  multiply  from  the  lower  and  not  from  the  higher  speci- 
mens of  the  race.  The  idle,  the  squalid,  the  unthrifty,  the 
undersized,  those  who  practise  no  forethought  and  exercise 
no  self-control,  those  who  live  on  degraded  and  adulterated 
food,  and  whose  one  joy  is  drugged  and  poisonous  drink; 
those  who  have  no  vista  but  the  workhouse  and  no  para- 
dise but  the  gin-shop,  are  at  this  moment  multiplying  ten 
per  cent,  more  rapidly  than  the  prudent  and  self-controlled. 
I  will  quote,  not  from  an  aristocrat,  but  from  a  Socialist 
leader,  who  describes  the  ever-waxing  crowds  of  the  East 
End  as  people  of  stunted  frames  and  dwarfed  intelligence, 
and  who  speaks  of  the  dwarfed  sympathy  of  children  in  the 
slums,  suckled  on  gin,  poisoned  by  foul  air,  corrupted  by 
filth  and  bad  food,  crippled  by  too  early  toil.  Premature 
marriages  intensify  the  curse.  In  the  year  1884  in  the 
East  End  of  London  59  per  cent,  of  men  —  that  is  to  say, 
14,818  men — and  75  per  cent,  of  women  were  married, —  if 
the  name  of  marriage  can  be  given  to  such  wretched  unions, 
—  were  married  before  twenty-one  years  of  age;  whereas  in 
St.  George's,  Hanover,  only  I  per  cent,  of  men  were  so 
married.  Fresh  complications  arise  from  the  ceaseless 
influx  into  London  of  starving  laborers,  helpless  Jews, 
pauper  Irish,  and  indigent  foreigners,  and  by  the  domi- 
nance in  this  afflicted  land  of  the  horrible  curse  of  drink. 
Blighted  and  shiftless  youths  without  health,  without  hope, 
without  resources,  without  God,  with  nothing  to  bring  to 


NATIONAL   PERILS. 


33 


the  work  of  life  but  their  hunger  and  their  lust,  swarm 
penniless  from  the  feverish  slums  in  which  they  scarcely 
ever  wash  or  change  their  clothes,  and  swamp  the  labor 
market  with  the  crudest  forms  of  unskilled  and  superfluous 
labor.  And  what  do  these  things  mean?  The  Socialists 
know  if  you  do  not.  They  mean  that,  unless  remedies  be 
found  in  our  earnestness  and  in  our  self-denial,  and  in  our 
promotion  by  every  possible  means  of  the  common  good  of 
all,  then  the  Huns  and  Vandals  who  shall  shipwreck  our 
civilization  are  being  bred,  as  Mr.  Henry  George  has 
warned  us,  not  in  the  steppes  of  Asia,  but  in  the  slums  of 
great  cities.  They  mean  that  they  who  put  down  their 
ears,  and  listen  to  the  ground-swell  murmuring  restlessly 
in  the  great  ocean  of  humanity,  hear  in  that  dull  hoarse 
roar  a  prelude  of  the  tidal  wave;  and  that,  as  Prince 
Krapotkin  tells  us,  a  multitude  whom  no  man  can  number, 
are  as  the  ocean,  and  shall  rise  and  swallow  up  all  else. 
They  mean  that,  if  there  be  no  remedy,  sooner  or  later  — 
and  sooner,  I  fear,  rather  than  later  —  there  will,  and  must 
be,  a  social  revolution  which  will  deepen  unspeakably  the 
general  catastrophe.  They  mean  that  if  the  upper  classes 
—  the  comfortable  classes,  the  upper  and  middle  classes  — 
do  not  rouse  themselves  from  what  has  been  called  their 
"awful  selfishness  and  bovine  contentment,"  they  will  be 
shaken  out  of  it  by  the  impatient  earthquake.  They  mean 
that  our  drink,  and  our  vice,  and  our  Mammon-worship  are 
bringing  about  by  natural  laws  their  own  inevitable  retri- 
bution, and  that  the  vultures  which  scent  decay  from  afar, 
and  may  be  seen  already  like  black  specks  on  the  horizon, 
will  soon  be  filling  the  whole  sky  with  "the  rushing  of 
their  congregated  wings." 

Fools  and  selfish  men,  and  those  who  do  not  care  what 


34  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

happens  to  the  world  when  they  cease  to  consume  its  fruits, 
will  be  deaf  and  blind  to  all  such  facts  as  these;  but  every 
earnest,  and  every  honorable,  and  every  Christian  man  and 
woman  will  ask,  Is  there  any  help  and  is  there  any  remedy? 
And  thus  much  I  will  answer  at  once, —  that  there  is  no 
help  and  that  there  is  no  remedy  except  in  lives  of  increas- 
ingly earnest  effort  and  more  self-denying  duty,  and  that 
to  all  who  are  not  enclosed  in  their  own  fat  such  considera- 
tions should  sound  as  a  clarion  call  to  be  up  and  doing. 

For  Socialism  is  no  remedy.  Socialism,  strong  only  in 
the  existence  of  neglected  evils  and  wrongs  unredressed, 
may  conceivably  triumph  for  a  time  in  England,  as  it  did 
in  France;  but,  if  so,  it  will  not  be  a  remedy, —  it  will  be 
an  aggravation.  It  may  preach  to  hungry  and  ignorant  men 
—  as  it  openly  does  abroad,  though  not  in  England  —  its 
devil's  gospel  of  plunder  and  confiscation;  it  may  cripple 
the  State  and  overthrow  the  Church  and  trample  on  the 
Crown,  and,  so  doing,  it  may  plunge  the  realm  into  some 
irretrievable  calamity.  But,  if  it  does,  its  own  helpless 
children  will  be  the  very  first  whom  it  will  ruthlessly 
devour,  and  it  will  be  in  its  turn  blown  into  ruins  by 
the  indignation  of  mankind. 

Legislation,  again,  is  no  remedy.  Legislation  might, 
indeed,  furnish  some  alleviations,  though  at  the  best  but 
partial  ones.  This  century  has  seen  many  noble  enact- 
ments, the  outcome  of  all  that  was  best  and  wisest,  most 
just  and  merciful,  in  the  national  heart.  Had  it  been 
otherwise,  our  case  would  long  ago  have  been  des- 
perate. But  there  can  be  no  more  legislation  ade- 
quately noble  and  adequately  strenuous,  unless  legislators, 
after  all  these  years  of  warning  and  struggle,  have 
the  courage  at  last  to  make  a  ruthless  sacrifice  of  sterile 


NATIONAL  PERILS. 


35 


party  chatter;  to  grapple  with  the  destroying  curse  of  drink; 
to  economize,  if  they  cannot  extirpate,  the  tempting  facil- 
ities to  vice;  to  make  short  work  with  the  owners  of  rot- 
ting houses,  and  the  vested  interests  of  all  those  who 
batten  on  the  degradation  of  mankind;  to  give  brief  shrift 
to  the  so-called  liberty  which  means  free  license  and  temp- 
tation to  do  wrong,  —  a  liberty  to  the  weakest  to  make 
themselves  the  beasts  and  slaves  of  their  lowest  appetites! 

But  if  Socialism  be  but  an  aggravation,  and  adequate 
legislation  be  at  present  hopeless,  individual  effort  is  a 
remedy.  Instead  of  sitting  still  in  aimless  acquiescence 
and  selfish  stupefaction,  let  us  each  see  how  God  calls  upon 
us  to  act.  Are  we  helplessly  to  wait  for  miraculous  inter- 
positions? If  so,  we  shall  perish  in  our  supineness. 

There  is  no  way  whatever  to  help  the  struggling  masses 
of  our  population  which  does  not  elevate  the  poor.  The 
condition  of  things  which  I  have  described  never  can  be 
remedied  —  nay,  will  grow  worse  and  worse,  until  the  pit 
swallow  it  —  unless  the  poor  can  be  roused  to  make  a 
resolute  effort  to  uplift  themselves.  Without  moral  and 
religious  remedies  all  others  will  be  in  vain. 

Alas!  the  classes  whom  I  would  fain  address  are  not 
here :  they  have,  for  the  most  part,  been  lost  long  ago  to 
the  Church  of  England  and  to  every  other  religious  de- 
nomination. On  us,  as  members  of  the  National  Church, 
rests  in  this  matter  an  immense  responsibility.  Our  pres- 
ent methods  will  not  reach  them;  to  our  elaborate  theol- 
ogies, and  our  routine  ceremonies,  and  our  professional 
fineries  they  have  nothing  to  say;  for  rubrics  and  millinery 
and  stereotyped  services,  they  care  no  more  than  they  do 
for  the  idle  wind;  they  want  a  broader,  simpler,  larger, 
truer,  manlier,  less  conventional,  less  corrupt,  less  fourth- 


36  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

century  gospel ;  they  want  the  essential  gospel ;  they  want 
Christ.  And,  oh!  if  He  were  here  now,  how  would  He 
be  moved  with  compassion  for  them;  how  would  He  go 
amongst  them-  how  little  would  He  care  for  our  petty 
ecclesiastical  jealousies;  how  unmixed  with  isms,  ologics, 
and  rites,  and  forms  would  be  His  pure,  heart-searching 
gospel!  But  this  certainly  He  would  tell  to  these  masses 
of  the  poor  whom  the  Church  has  lost,  these  sheep  having 
no  shepherd, —  that  nothing  which  can  be  done  to  help  them 
will  be  of  any  avail  until  they  have  learned  to  help  them- 
selves. They  and  their  demagogues  point  often  with  scorn- 
ful finger  to  the  scandals  in  the  lives  of  the  aristocracy : 
their  own  lives  are  often  ten  times  more  scandalous.  They 
talk  of  the  selfish  rich:  the  poor,  too,  often  in  their 
way,  are  ten  times  more  selfish.  The  pauper  youth  who 
marries  within  half  a  crown  of  starvation;  the  labourer 
who  drinks  five  shillings'  worth  a  week  of  gin  and  ale, 
while  his  children  are  starving  and  his  wife  is  in  rags;  the 
loafer  who  will  scarcely  do  an  honest  day's  work, —  each  of 
these  is  a  far  worse  enemy  of  society,  far  more  selfish,  and 
far  more  of  a  voluptuary  in  his  vile  way  than  any  of  the 
rich.  They  talk  of  being  slaves:  they  are  only  too  free,— 
free  to  destroy  themselves  body  and  soul,  and  through 
drink  and  lust  to  kindle  the  fires  of  hell  in  their  hearts 
and  on  their  hearths. 

But  is  it  nothing  to  us?  Are  we  each,  like  so  many 
Cains,  to  say,  "Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?"  I  say  that 
on  every  one  of  us  is  incumbent  the  plain  duty  of  consider- 
ing these  signs  of  the  times,  of  considering  the  poor,  of 
doing  our  utmost  in  whatever  way  God  makes  clear  to  us  — 
and,  if  we  seek  the  way,  He  will  make  it  clear  to  us  —  to 
avert  the  lurid  menace  of  these  lowering  skies.  If  Social- 


NATIONAL  PERILS. 


37 


ism  be  a  ruin  and  not  a  remedy,  if  the  action  of  legislation 
be  at  the  best  but  tardy  and  partial,  can  the  Church  of 
God  do  nothing?  To  me  it  seems  that  what  I  mean  by  the 
Church  of  God  is  the  only  power  which  can  do  anything. 
God's  arm  is  not  shortened;  the  outpouring  of  God's  Spirit 
was  not  confined  to  Pentecost.  The  Divine  enthusiasm 
which  grappled  with  the  abominations  of  paganism,  refuted 
its  philosophies,  routed  its  legions,  regenerated  its  corrupt 
society,  reinspired  and  reconstructed  its  shattered  institu- 
tions,—  the  Spirit  of  God  which  of  old  brooded  upon  the 
face  of  the  waters  and  said,  "Let  there  be  light,"  and  there 
was  light, —  that  Spirit  is  omnipotent  to  deliver  us  from 
dangers  far  more  threatening  than  these,  only  it  waits  for 
hearts  strong  enough  and  pure  enough  to  receive  its  mighty 
inspirations;  "hearts  pure  and  transparent  as  crystal,  strong 
and  active  as  fire,  patient  and  enduring  as  the  hearts  of 
martyrs."  Even  now  that  Spirit  is  calling,  "Whom  shall 
I  send  and  who  will  go  for  us?"  And  when  men  are  noble 
enough  to  say,  with  all  their  hearts,  "  Here  am  I :  send 
me !  "  and  to  go  forth,  if  need  be,  without  bread,  or  scrip, 
or  money  in  their  purse,  then  the  apostolic  succession  of 
inspired  men  will  be  renewed,  and  we  shall  see  once  more 
such  miracles  as  were  wrought  of  old  by  Paul  and  John, 
by  Benedict  and  Francis,  by  Luther  and  Whitefield.  The 
Church  of  God,  I  say,  is  the  only  power  on  earth  which  can 
face  the  enormous  and  complicated  problems  of  the  future. 
And  by  the  Church  of  God  I  mean  you,  every  one  of  you, —  I 
mean  all  true  Christians,  whether  they  worship  in  Abbeys  or 
in  Ebenezers.  The  clergy  alone  are  as  nothing  in  this  work : 
they  are  but  20,000,  and  you  are  more  than  30,000,000. 
Until  each  one  of  you  does  his  own  duty,  the  work  of  God's 
Universal  Church  will  be  miserably  paralyzed;  until  each 


38  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

sweeps  before  his  own  door,  the  streets  of  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem will  not  be  clean.  We  are  treated  to  loud  jubilation 
in  these  days  on  the  work  of  the  Church,  and,  if  we  hear  a 
string  of  notices  given  out  about  endless  services  and  Holy 
Communions,  we  think  that  a  great  deal  must  be  doing. 
I  attach  very  little  importance  indeed  to  services  and  com- 
munions at  which,  out  of  parishes  of  many  thousands,  per- 
haps not  half  a  dozen  persons  are  present ;  and,  in  general, 
much  which  passes  in  our  ecclesiastical  circles  for  extreme 
clerical  activity  is  little  better  than  outward  function  and 
strenuous  idleness.  All  that  kind  of  activity  was  in  its 
very  fullest  bloom  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  Priests 
and  Pharisees  thronged  its  courts  at  the  very  time  that 
Jesus  was  saying  on  the  Mount  of  Olives,  "Not  one  stone 
of  it  shall  be  left  upon  another." 

I  cannot  share,  I  grieve  to  say,  in  these  jubilations  about 
our  progress.  When  in  one  city  of  four  millions,  three 
millions  and  more  on  one  Sunday  are  in  no  place  of  wor- 
ship, I  think  the  Church  should  rather  be  sitting  and  weep- 
ing in  dust  and  ashes  than  glorifying  herself  about  her  own 
activity.  New  times  want  new  methods  and  new  men;  and 
if  we  do  not  adopt  new  methods,  and  find  new  men  who 
really  are  men,  we  shall  die  of  our  impotent  respectability. 
It  is  not  enough  for  us  only  to  edify,  or  strive  to  edify,  the 
faithful  few,  when  so  little  is  being  done  to  reach  the  lost 
many.  We  need  a  new  order  of  clergy  altogether,  side  by 
side  with  and  nobler  than  ourselves, —  an  order  that  will 
live  poor  and  unmarried  in  the  very  midst  of  the  poor,  as 
poorly  as  they  live,  giving  up,  as  the  apostles  did,  every- 
thing for  Christ;  men  who  shall  take  the  simple  gospel  in 
their  hands,  and  nothing  else;  men  conspicuous  for  their 
manliness,  their  humility,  their  self-sacrifice,  and  who  by 


NATIONAL  PERILS. 


39 


their  whole  lives  will  po,ur  silent  contempt  on  gold.  And 
we  need  among  all  classes  of  Englishmen  a  deeper  sincer- 
ity, a  more  willing  self-denial,  a  larger  liberality,  a  truer 
estimate  of  the  real  ends  of  life,  an  awakening  conception 
of  the  truth  that  "heaven  means  principle,"  and  that  life 
means  service,  and  that  there  are  times  when  he  who  would 
really  find  his  life  must  lose  it.  There  is  not  one  person  in 
this  congregation,  young  or  old,  who  ought  not  to  ask  him- 
self to-day  whether  he  has  been  really  enrolled  in  God's  army, 
or  whether  his  life  is  useless  for  any  purpose  but  his  own 
self-indulgence;  whether  he  has  been  individually  told  off 
into  active  service  in  the  contest  between  the  powers  of  life 
and  the  powers  of  death,  or  whether  he  is  living  to  any 
better  purpose  than  to  eat  and  drink  and  sleep,  and  turn 
the  whole  world  into  a  feeding-trough  for  his  own  special 
use. 

If  so,  woe  unto  him!  And  woe  unto  that  society  and 
woe  unto  that  nation  that  has  many  such  sons!  Oh,  I 
entreat  you,  let  us  all  take  to  heart  this  warning,  and  let 
us  feel  sure  that  in  God's  battles  slackness  is  infamy!  On 
every  side  around  us  there  are  calls  for  the  most  fearless 
love  of  truth,  and  scorn  for  illusions  and  for  hypocrisies; 
calls  for  the  most  strenuous  action,  and  scorn  for  greedy 
and  selfish  ease.  For  it  was  on  the  eve  of  one  of  the  most 
terrible  destructions  which  the  world  has  ever  seen  that 
Christ  said  to  the  full-fed  Sadducees  and  Pharisees  of  a 
self-satisfied  generation:  "In  the  morning  ye  say,  Foul 
weather  to-day:  for  the  sky  is  red  and  lowring.  O  ye 
hypocrites,  ye  can  discern  the  face  of  the  sky;  but  can  ye 
not  discern  the  signs  of  the  times?" 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES. 

"Woe  unto  you,  scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites !  " —  LUKE  xi.  44. 

THERE  are  two  causes  to  which  a  good  man  may  devote 
himself  as  the  fit  occupation  for  a  noble  life, —  the  cause  of 
the  individual  and  the  cause  of  the  race.  There  is  but 
one  cause  to  which  no  truly  good  or  noble  man  may  or  can 
devote  himself:  it  is  the  cause  which  the  vast  majority  of 
mankind  serve  with  intense  devotion  all  their  lives, —  the 
cause  of  self.  It  is  quite  true  that  men  who  are  deemed 
great  do  devote  themselves  to  this  cause  of  self,  and  that 
exclusively;  and,  in  doing  so,  succeed  beyond  the  wildest 
dreams  of  avarice  and  of  ambition.  They  succeed,  and  they 
are  miserable;  and  they  deserve  to  be  so.  Such  a  wor- 
shipper of  self,  ready  for  self's  sake  to  deluge  the  world  in 
blood  and  steep  his  conscience  in  crime,  was  Bonaparte. 
His  life  was  a  colossal  effort  to  succeed  without  a  con- 
science. You  know  what  came  of  it, —  its  retributive  an- 
guish, its  miserable  collapse. 

"  Behold  the  grand  result  in  yon  lone  isle, 
And,  as  thy  nature  urges,  weep  or  smile ; 
Behold  the  scales  in  which  his  fortune  hangs, — 
A  surgeon's  statements  and  an  earl's  harangues." 

Yes!  such  a  life  is  one  of  the  numberless  comments 
written  by  history,  with  endless  variations  of  detail,  but 
perfect  unity  of  teaching, —  comments  on  our  Lord's  oft- 
repeated  words,  "He  that  saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it;  and 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES.  4I 

he  that  loseth  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the  gospel's,   the 
same  shall  save  it." 

Now  I  shall  dwell  a  good  deal  on  the  life  of  a  man 
who,  whatever  were  his  faults, —  and  they  were  very  grave 
and  even  deadly  faults, — :and  who,  however  serious  was 
the  injury  which  he  inflicted  on  religious  belief,  yet 
did,  in  his  measure,  and  in  some  directions,  fulfil  the 
high  duty  of  man  to  his  race.  He  was  one  who  has 
been  often  and  most  bitterly  denounced  as  a  sceptic,  as 
a  blasphemer.  He  has  been  often,  and  not  unjustly,  de- 
scribed as  vain,  impure,  theatrical,  unscrupulous,  untruth- 
ful. He  dealt  many  a  wicked  blow,  not  only  at  things 
falsely  deemed  sacred,  but  at  things  which  are  sacred;  and 
he  stood  pre-eminent  among  a  band  of  men  who  are  re- 
garded as  enemies  of  religion.  There  have  been,  thank 
God,  hundreds  of  saints  in  the  world;  and  there  have  been 
hundreds  of  saints  who  perhaps  were  all  the  more  saintly 
that  they  have  never  been  sainted.  But  the  man  of  whom 
I  speak  was  no  saint,  no  hero.  He  set  in  many  respects 
a  bad  and  low  example.  He  cannot,  I  fear,  be  called,  in 
any  high  sense,  a  good  man.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
has  often  been  a  fibre  of  goodness  and  nobleness,  whether 
you  call  it  saintliness  or  not,  in  many  of  the  utterly  un- 
saintly,  just  as  there  is,  alas!  many  a  root  of  bitterness 
in  the  characters  of  those  who  pride  themselves  on  being 
religious  men.  Judge  for  yourselves  whether  it  was  so  or 
not  in  the  character  of  the  man  of  whom  I  shall  speak. 
But  before  I  mention  his  name,  or  say  a  word  about  him, 
you  will  perhaps  ask  me  why,  in  any  case,  I  hold  up  the 
virtues  of  such  a  man  for  example  and  admiration.  Well, 
among  other  reasons,  because  I  choose  for  once  to  follow 
the  example  of  Scripture.  The  Scriptures,  again  and 


42  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

again,  hold  up  to  us  imitable  examples  in  men  who  were 
in  other  respects  far  from  good, —  in  Saul,  in  Gideon,  in 
Jephthah,  in  Samson,  in  David,  in  Solomon,  in  Jonah,  in 
many  men  intensely  faulty,  in  whom,  nevertheless,  there 
was  a  salt  of  righteousness,  and  of  whom  there  is  much 
that  was  good  to  tell.  I  will  cut  short  further  cavils  with 
the  plain  practice  of  our  Lord.  He  found  more  that  was 
estimable,  more  that  was  redeemable,  in  publicans  and  sin- 
ners than  in  scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites.  His  type  of 
Christian  love  to  our  neighbor  was  not  sleek  priest  or  scru- 
pulous Levite,  but  a  hated  and  heretical  Samaritan.  And, 
when  in  His  teaching  he  wished  to  emphasize  some  special 
point  of  justice  or  prudence,  sometimes,  as  in  the  parables 
of  the  dishonest  steward  and  of  the  unjust  judge,  He  set  it 
in  relief  by  throwing  it  on  the  dark  background  of  a  char- 
acter otherwise  evil,  or  of  conduct  otherwise  to  be  con- 
demned. We  must  not  be  afraid  of  Christ's  own  methods; 
and  I  shall  try  to  show  you  the  grandeur  and  the  beauty  of 
certain  forms  of  duty  and  service  as  illustrated  by  the  char- 
acter and  as  prominent  in  the  conduct  of  one  at  whom, 
when  I  have  finished,  he  who  is  without  sin  among  us  may, 
if  he  will,  fling  a  stone,  as  at  a  wicked  man.  For  my  part, 
I  will  try  to  learn  a  lesson  from  the  good  that  was  in  this 
man,  while  I  leave  all  that  was  evil  in  him  to  the  Judge  of 
all  the  earth. 

Now  there  were  vast  principles  for  which  the  man 
of  whom  I  speak  struggled  all  his  life, —  vast  and  splendid 
principles;  principles  often  terribly  lacking  in  Chris- 
tians,—  lacking  most  of  all  in  many  of  those  who  call 
themselves  ecclesiastics  and  churchmen.  They  are  the 
principles  of  justice,  of  tolerance,  of  humanity.  Many 
churchmen  breathe  of  deliberate  choice  the  very  atmos- 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES.  43 

phere  of  intolerance.  They  turn  religion  itself  into  a 
chaos  of  violent  hatreds  and  petty  spites.  They  see  injus- 
tice and  inhumanity  around  them,  and  look  at  it  with  an 
immoral  acquiescence.  "The  worst  of  the  worthy  sort  of 
people  is,"  said  this  man,  "that  they  are  such  cowards. 
A  man  groans  over  wrong;  he  shuts  his  lips;  he  takes  his 
supper;  he  forgets."  And  again,  "People  talk  about  a 
wrong  for  a  moment,  and  the  next  they  are  hastening  to 
the  comic  opera;  and  barbarity,  becoming  the  more  inso- 
lent for  our  silence,  will  cut  throats  at  pleasure."  Their 
attitude  towards  the  great  mass  of  mankind  resembles  the 
terrible  ballad  of  the  French  poet.  A  young  and  lovely 
girl  named  Constance  was  burned  to  death  as  she  was  array- 
ing herself  for  a  ball  at  the  ambassador's.  The  news 
arrived  during  the  ball.  What  happened?  They  said, 
"Poor  Constance!"  and  they  waltzed  till  daybreak  at  the 
house  of  the  ambassador  of  France ! 

This  man  could  not  take  so  lightly  the  existence  of  these 
wrongs  and  crimes.  They  filled  him  "with  a  blaze  of  anger 
and  pity."  "With  an  unrelenting  perseverance,  inexorable 
as  doom,  he  got  wrong  definitely  stamped  and  transfixed." 
It  was  by  fighting  against  oppression  and  cruelty  with  all 
the  keenness  of  his  radiant  genius  that,  whether  you  call 
him  a  bad  character  or  not,  he,  amid  all  the  evil  which  he 
did,  still  rendered  immortal  service  to  the  cause  of  civili- 
zation, to  the  cause  of  man. 

I  will  tell  you  his  name,  but  not  at  once.  At  present 
we  will  call  him  Arouet.  It  was  his  real  name,  the  name 
of  his  birth,  but  not  the  name  by  which  he  is  usually 
known,  or  the  name  by  which  he  will  be  recognized  by 
most  of  you.  And,  if  many  of  you  do  by  this  time  recog- 
nize who  he  was,  remember  that,  so  far  as  he  was  an  enemy 


44  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

to  religion,  while  yet  he  was  a  friend  to  so  much  that  was 
noble  and  good,  it  was  because,  in  his  day,  religion  was 
mixed  up  with  much  that  was  false,  corrupt,  and  hypocriti- 
cal. In  its  pride  and  ignorance,  the  thing  which  called 
itself  religion  —  which  was  not  true  religion,  but  its  fatal 
counterfeit  —  often  proved  itself,  as  it  now  so  often  proves 
itself,  an  enemy  to  all  that  he  loved  most  passionately, —  an 
enemy  to  tolerance,  an  enemy  to  humanity,  an  enemy  to 
truth. 

You  have  all  heard  in  English  history  of  the  name 
of  the  unfortunate  Admiral  Byng.  In  the  year  1756  he  was 
sent  to  seize  Port  Mahon  in  Minorca.  His  opponent  was 
Marshal  Richelieu.  By  some  accident,  probably  through 
no  fault  of  his  own,  Byng  failed  to  relieve  Minorca.  For 
this  he  was  tried.  Chatham,  the  great  Prime  Minister, 
was  for  mercy:  the  House  of  Commons  inclined  to  mercy; 
but  the  king  was  inexorable,  and  the  English  people,  in 
one  of  their  periodical  paroxysms  of  mad  injustice  and 
ignorant  fury,  were,  in  their  disappointment,  clamoring  for 
blood.  By  a  sentence  disgracefully  iniquitous,  Admiral 
Byng  was  shot  on  his  own  quarter-deck.  But  the  man  of 
whom  I  speak  —  Arouet  —  did  his  utmost  to  save  him,  and 
for  this  purpose  forwarded  to  him  a  letter  in  which  his 
opponent,  Richelieu  himself,  had  spoken  of  his  bravery 
and  good  judgment.  The  effort  was  in  vain.  Had  it  suc- 
ceeded, the  page  of  English  history  would  not  have  been 
encrimsoned  with  that  ineffaceable  stain  of  innocent  blood. 
Again,  in  1702  there  was  an  infirm  old  man  at 
Toulouse,  a  Protestant  bookseller  named  Calas.  His  elder 
son  had  become  a  Romanist.  His  second  son  was  found 
hung  in  his  father's  shop.  Calas  was  accused  of  having 
murdered  this  son,  in  order  to  prevent  him  from  abjuring 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES.  45 

Protestantism.  There  was  not  a  particle  of  real  evidence 
against  him;  but,  under  the  influence  of  a  bigoted  judge, 
his  youngest  son  was  banished,  his  widow  and  children 
were  put  to  the  torture,  and  he  himself,  brutally  broken  on 
the  wheel,  died  protesting  his  innocence  with  his  last 
breath.  His  wife  and  family  fled  to  Arouet,  who  sup- 
ported and  protected  them.  Devoting  his  genius  to  their 
cause,  though  the  brutal  sentence  was  sustained  by  the 
whole  power  of  the  Church,  he  got  the  judgment  against 
Galas  unanimously  reversed  by  the  Council  of  State, 
and  the  ruin  of  the  family  restored  out  of  the  public 
purse.  The  work  occupied  the  soul  of  Arouet  for  three 
years;  and  during  all  that  time,  he  said,  "if  a  single  smile 
escaped  me,  I  reproached  myself  with  it  as  a  crime." 

Again,  a  young  girl  named  Sirven,  torn  from  her 
parents  who  were  Protestants,  and  shut  up  in  a  convent, 
weary  with  cruel  treatment,  escaped  from  the  convent,  and 
flung  herself  into  a  well.  The  priest  who  had  shut  her  up, 
the  nuns  who  had  ill-used  her, —  they  doubtless  deserved 
punishment;  but  instead  of  this  the  miserable  father  was 
falsely  accused  of  having  murdered  her,  and  was  con- 
demned, like  Calas,  in  the  same  year,  to  be  broken  on  the 
wheel.  He  fled  in  time;  but  his  wife,  who  accompanied 
him,  perished  of  misery  among  the  snows  of  the  C6vennes, 
and  Sirven  joined  the  wretched  family  of  Calas  under  the 
protection  of  Arouet  at  Geneva,  who  there  supported  them. 
Arouet  once  more  flung  himself  into  the  poor  man's  cause, 
and  by  his  influence  and  his  eloquence,  and  by  agitating 
the  whole  world  with  pity  and  indignation,  secured  his 
acquittal. 

Once  more,  in  the  same  year,  1766,  it  was  found 
that  a  wooden  crucifix  on  the  Bridge  of  Abbeville  had  been 


46  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

mutilated  during  the  night.  Suspicion  fell  on  two  lads  of 
eighteen  and  sixteen, —  a  young  soldier,  the  Chevalier  de  la 
Barre,  and  his  friend,  D'Etallonde.  There  was  not  an 
atom  of  proof  against  them;  according  even  to  their  sen- 
tence, they  were  only  "vehemently  suspected."  But  pri- 
vate grudge  and  vile  fanaticism  were  set  to  work.  Priests 
and  Jesuits  with  dark  lies  maddened  the  blind  multitude. 
D'Etallonde  fled,  and  Arouet  procured  him  a  commission 
in  the  army  of  the  King  of  Prussia.  He  thus  escaped  the 
abominable  sentence  pronounced  upon  these  poor  boys  by 
the  Bishop  of  Amiens.  The  sentence  pronounced  by  this 
bishop  was  that  the  two  boys  should  have  their  tongues  cut 
out,  their  right  hands  struck  off,  and  be  burned  at  a  slow 
fire.  The  Parliament  of  Paris  commuted  the  punishment 
to  decapitation;  and  young  De  la  Barre  was  first  horribly 
tortured,  and  then  beheaded.  For  twelve  years  Arouet 
held  up  to  deserved  execration  the  hideous  and  criminal 
punishment  by  which  the  official  ministers  of  the  gospel  of 
mercy  and  forgiveness  had  immolated  a  boy's  life  on  the 
Moloch-altar  of  religious  bigotry. 

Again,  in  1766  Count  Lally  was  condemned  to 
death  in  Paris,  after  a  trial  tainted  with  every  kind  of 
illegality,  for  asserted  misconduct  in  India.  It  was  a  case 
analogous  to  that  of  Admiral  Byng.  The  French  were  infu- 
riated by  the  loss  of  their  Indian  possessions,  and  thirsted 
vindictively  for  blood.  A  victim,  like  Byng,  to  the  blind 
and  brutal  passion  of  the  populace,  Count  Lally  was  con- 
demned, and,  with  a  gag  between  his  teeth,  was  dragged 
off  to  execution.  For  twelve  years  Arouet  pleaded  for  a 
reversal  of  the  attainder,  and  the  news  that  he  was  at  last 
successful  cheered  his  dying-bed.  "  I  die  happy,"  he  wrote: 
"I  see  that  the  king  loves  justice."  Those  were  the  last 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES. 


47 


words  —  that  word  "justice"  was  the  last  word  —  that  he 
ever  wrote. 

I  might  tell  you  more  of  the  same  kind:  how  this 
man,  indignant  to  see  some  12,000  peasants  treated  as  serfs 
by  twenty  lazy  monks,  lived  to  hasten  the  abolition  of  serf- 
dom throughout  France;  how  he  lent  to  a  poor  family  the 
means  of  supporting  their  rights  to  an  estate  against  the 
encroachments  of  the  Jesuits;  how  he  relieved  the  poverty 
of  the  grand-niece  of  Corneille;  how  he  once  burst  into 
anger  because  two  white  doves  which  had  been  given  him 
had  been  killed  for  food;  how  his  heart  was  ever  open  to 
the  cry  of  the  persecuted,  and  his  purse  to  the  miseries  of 
the  needy.  And  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that,  in  deeds 
like  these,  I  see  in  this  man  who  was  no  Christian,  who 
may  well  be  regarded  as  an  enemy  of  Christianity,  better 
Christian  qualities  than  have  been  shown  even  by  many 
Christian  priests.  In  an  age  of  gross  injustice,  in  an  age 
when -the  eyes  of  justice  were  bandaged  and  blinded  by  the 
fury  of  sacerdotal  superstition,  I  see  in  him  a  splendid  love 
of  justice.  "My  cause,"  he  wrote,  "is  only  that  of  an  ob- 
scure family,  but  the  meanest  citizen  murdered  unjustly 
by  the  sword  of  the  law  is  precious  to  the  nation."  "Pun- 
ish," he  wrote,  "but  do  not  punish  blindly.  Reason  must 
be  the  guide  of  justice,  though  she  be  painted  with  a  band- 
age over  her  eyes." — I  see  in  him  faith  in  human  nature. 
"The  love  of  honor,"  he  wrote,  "and  the  fear  of  shame, 
are  better  moralists  than  the  executioners." — I  see  a 
hatred  of  cruelty.  Torture,  he  pleaded,  should  be  utterly 
abolished. —  I  see  a  hatred  of  fanaticism,  which  he  justly 
characterized  as  the  rage,  the  madness,  of  souls. — I  see  the 
courage  of  insight.  A  crime  was  always  to  him  a  crime, 
whether  a  king  committed  it  in  the  madness  of  anger  or  a 


48  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

law  court  with  the  formal itfes  of  statutes.  And  for  these 
principles  in  which  our  whole  race  is  concerned  Arouet 
maintained  for  sixty  years  an  incomparable  struggle. 
Wherever  he  saw  a  right  oppressed,  he  strove  to  vindicate 
it;  wherever  he  heard  of  a  victim  of  injustice,  he  strove  to 
redress  or  avenge  his  cause.  When  he  was  an  old  man, 
the  wise  and  good  Franklin  brought  his  grandson  to  him, 
for  his  blessing.  "God,  liberty,  tolerance,  that,"  he  said, 
"is  the  best  blessing  for  Franklin's  grandson." 

I  began  by  saying  that  there  are  two  mighty  and 
noble  feelings  which  may  sway  the  human  heart :  one,  the 
pity  for  individual  suffering,  the  pity  which,  like  the  little 
new-born  babe,  sits  in  the  heart  of  a  John  Howard  or  a 
Vincent  de  Paul;  the  other,  the  passionate  indignation  for 
human  wrongs.  There  are  souls  which  feel  wounded  when 
reason  is  wounded;  which,  moved  by  a  lofty  and  masculine 
sensibility,  are  keenly  alive  to  the  mighty  interests  of 
order,  justice,  and  human  dignity.  The  spirit  of  man 
plunged  in  ignorance  and  error,  liberty  of  person  fettered, 
liberty  of  conscience  strangled,  justice  perverted,  inno- ' 
cence  oppressed,  reason  hurled  down  by  violence,  multi- 
tudes crushed  by  a  selfish  despotism, —  these  are  the  wrongs 
which  fill  their  souls  with  flame.  And  what  are  these  but 
violations  of  the  Christian  law,  "Do  unto  others  as  ye 
would  they  should  do  unto  you " ;  violations  of  that  holy 
law  on  a  vaster  scale,  and  transferred  from  the  individual 
to  the  social  sphere? 

But  now  who  was  this  man,  this  Arouet,  of  whom  I 
have  spoken  to  you  ?  None  other  than  he  who  is  known  to 
the  world  by  the  detested  name  of  Voltaire.  You  have 
never  heard  of  him  but  as  an  enemy  to  religion,  as  he  who, 
in  the  poet's  words, 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES. 

"  For  the  bane  of  thousands  born, 
Built  God  a  church,  and  laughed  His  word  to  scorn." 


49 


Yes!  but  herein  lies  my  lesson.  If  an  enemy  to  re- 
ligion can  do  such  deeds,  what  ought  we  to  do  who  call 
ourselves  its  friends?  Alas!  it  might  be  well  for  many  a 
Christian  if,  when  he  stands,  before  the  awful  bar,  the 
recording  angel  can  plead  for  him  against  the  accuser  of 
his  sins  such  good  deeds  as  were  done  for  Byng,  for  Galas, 
for  Sirven,  for  Lally,  for  De  la  Barre,  for  many  more,  by 
this  Voltaire,  whose  body,  when  he  died,  the  Church  of 
France,  implacable  even  to  the  dead,  would  fain  have  flung 
forth  unburied  upon  the  dunghill. 

The  enemy  of  religion?  Yes!  but  what  kind  of 
religion,  calling  itself  religion,  did  Voltaire  see?  In  his 
very  infancy,  he  had  been  trained  by  that  monstrous  but 
in  those  days  not  uncommon  thing,  an  atheist  priest.  On 
all  sides,  he  saw  among  the  professors  of  religion  a  fierce  and 
infatuated  intolerance,  a  scheming  and  licentious  hypoc- 
risy, a  petty  and  wrangling  party  spirit,  a  mean  and  frivo- 
lous superstition.  In  the  State  he  saw  prisons  filled  with 
brave  and  innocent  citizens.  He  saw  luxurious  splendour 
supported  by  oppressive  taxes  at  the  expense  of  general 
starvation.  In  alliance  with  this  State  he  saw  a  Church  in 
which  Jesuits  were  dominant.  Under  their  dominance,  in 
his  youth  he  saw  Louis  XIV.  unreproved  by  the  Church 
when  he  was  a  profligate  and  flattered  by  the  Church  when 
he  was  a  prosecutor,  suppressing  Protestants  by  dragon- 
nades,  and  driving  from  his  kingdom  50,000  of  his  best 
subjects.  In  his  manhood  he  saw  Louis  XV.  suffering 
harlot  after  harlot  to  toy  with  the  contaminated  crown  of 
St.  Louis  in  the  palaces  of  France.  He  saw  the  clergy 
solicitous  about  the  gay  plumage  of  the  court  and  careless 


go  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

of  the  dying  bird  of  the  nation.  He  saw  them  cruel,  arro- 
gant, idle,  among  a  lower  class  sunk  in  ignorance,  and  an 
upper  class  steeped  in  immorality.  He  saw  contending 
sects  animated  by  bitter  mutual  hatred.  He  saw  a  tyran- 
nical inquisition,  which  tortured  the  consciences  of  the 
dying  and  wreaked  vengeance  even  on  the  dead.  If  relig- 
ion was  attacked  in  France, —  if  religion  has,  alas!  fallen, 
dragging  down  with  it  morality  and  glory, —  that  is  due, 
not  to  the  shining  arrows  launched  against  it  by  Vol- 
taire, but,  on  the  one  hand,  to  the  faithlessness  by  which 
it  was  degraded  and  the  insincerity  with  which  it  was 
corrupted  through  and  through;  on  the  other,  to  its  own 
absence  of  wisdom  and  candour,  of  tolerance  and  justice,  to 
its  own  cruelty  and  its  own  godlessness,  to  its  alliance 
with  arrogant  stupidity  and  intolerant  superstition. 

Do  not  think  that  I  have  been  relating  history.  I 
never  allude  to  the  past  except  to  point  a  lesson  to  the 
present.  And  I  call  attention  to  these  great  principles 
of  a  very  imperfect  — -  if  you  will,  of  a  bad  —  man,  because 
I  think  that  they  are  eminently  needed  among  Christians 
still. 

For  instance,  you  profess  and  call  yourselves  Chris- 
tians. Are  you  tolerant  ?  Doubtless  you  can  be  sweet  as 
summer  to  those  of  your  own  sect  or  clique  or  school  of 
thought ;  you  can  praise  and  honor  those  who  flatter  you, 
those  who  answer  you  according  to  your  idols.  But  have 
you  the  least  tolerance,  forbearance,  kindness,  candour,  for 
those  who  disdain  to  speak  to  you  anything  but  the  truth? 
Have  you  any  charity  for  those  whose  views  are  entirely 
different  from  your  own?  Have  you  long  made  up  your 
mind  that  those  who  oppose  your  views  must  be  very  stupid 
or  very  wicked  people? — I  hope  better  things  of  you;  but 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES.  gj 

such,  I  see,  is  the  tone  commonly  adopted  by  religious  par- 
tisans. 

Are  you  just?  If  you  are,  I  can  only  say  that  I 
can  testify,  from  large  experience  and  constant  observation, 
that  many  persons  who  call  themselves  religious  do  not 
seem  to  have  of  justice  even  the  most  elementary  concep- 
tion. Judging  by  their  newspapers,  judging  by  their 
anonymous  letters,  judging  by  their  ways  of  carrying  on  a 
controversy,  judging  by  the  line  which  they  take  towards 
opponents,  I  see  on  all  sides  in  the  religious  world  men 
who  are  habitually  and  conspicuously  unjust. 

Are  you  humane?  Do  you  really  care  for  the 
struggles  and  the  sufferings  of  the  drunkard,  of  the  sick, 
of  the  wretched?  Which  do  you  think  of  most, —  the 
duties  of  property  or  of  its  rights?  the  riches  of  the  few 
or  the  misery  of  the  many?  the  protection  of  the  multi- 
tude or  the  privileges  of  the  millionaire?  Is  there  one 
of  the  world's  heavy  burdens  which  you  are  helping  to  lift, 
were  it  so  much  as  with  one  of  your  fingers  ? 

Well,  of  this  be  sure.  These  virtues  of  conduct, 
these  principles  of  life, —  tolerance,  justice,  humanity, — 
which  are  but  Christian  charity  exercised  in  the  sphere 
of  the  world,  are  essential  to  the  very  existence  of  relig- 
ion. And  if  the  Church  does  not  develop  these  virtues 
among  her  sons  —  if  she  develop  none  of  these  large  and 
masculine  virtues,  but  only  thin,  effeminate,  ecclesiastical 
virtues  —  then,  in  the  days  of  coming  struggle,  she  cannot 
and  she  will  not  hold  her  own.  And  if  religion  does  fall 
because  Christians  are  uncharitable  and  priests  are  parti- 
sans, or  because  churchmen,  forgetting  the  weightier  mat- 
ters of  the  law,  care  only  for  the  mint  and  cumin  of  the 
infinitely  little,  then  Voltaire  shall  rise  up  against  this 


52  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

generation  and  shall  condemn  it.  And,  as  it  will  be 
better  for  Nineveh  and  for  Sodom  in  the  day  of  judgment 
than  for  Chorazin  and  for  Bethsaida,  so,  too,  it  may  be  bet- 
ter for  the  robust  virtues  of  men  who  had  been  disgusted 
by  a  narrow  and  corrupt  ecclesiasticism  than  for  the 
smooth  conventionalities  of  men  who,  absorbed  in  their 
petty  sectarianisms  of  system  and  of  ceremony,  look  on  at 
the  wounds  of  humanity  as  indifferently  as  the  cold  Levite 
and  the  sanctimonious  Priest. 

One  last  word.  You  are  all,  doubtless,  better  than 
Voltaire;  you  can  all  afford  to  speak  of  him  with  the  hiss 
of  contempt,  and  fling  at  him  the  stone  of  condemnation. 
Be  it  so:  then  do  better  than  he  did;  or  do  what  you  will, 
but  do  in  these  directions  one-tenth  part  as  well  as  he! 
We  want  large,  manly  virtues,  not  miserable  squabbles  and 
heresy-huntings.  All  the  formalism  and  all  the  profession 
in  the  world  will  not  elevate  you  even  to  his  standard ;  but, 
if  you  have  faith,  if  you  have  love,  as  a  grain  of  mustard- 
seed,  you  may  be,  in  all  that  affects  man's  deepest  inter- 
ests, incomparably  more  happy  and  incomparably  more 
wise.  For  in  failing  to  know  the  blessing  of  Christ  and 
the  power  of  his  resurrection,  Voltaire  lost  the  purest  hap- 
piness, the  most  sustaining  consolation,  of  our  sad  life 
here. 

"  The  Frenchman  first  in  literary  fame, — 
Mention  him,  if  you  please.     Voltaire?    The  same, 
With  spirit,  genius,  eloquence  supplied, 
Lived  long,  wrote  much,  laughed  heartily,  and  died. 
Yon  cottager,  who  weaves  at  her  own  door, 
Pillow  and  bobbins  all  her  little  store, 
Receives  no  praise ;  but,  though  her  lot  be  such, — 
Toilsome  and  indigent, —  she  renders  much  ; 
Just  knows,  and  knows  no  more,  her  Bible  true, — 
A  truth  the  brilliant  Frenchman  never  knew, — 


THE  SACREDNESS  OF  PUBLIC  DUTIES. 

And  in  that  charter  reads  with  sparkling  eyes 
Her  title  to  a  treasure  in  the  skies. 
O  happy  peasant,  O  unhappy  bard, 
His  the  mere  tinsel,  hers  the  rich  reward ; 
He  praised  perhaps  for  ages  yet  to  come, 
She  never  heard  of  half  a  mile  from  home  ; 
He  lost  in  errors  his  vain  heart  prefers, 
She  safe  in  the  simplicity  of  hers  !  " 


53 


NATIONAL  DUTIES. 

"Cast  out  devils." — MATT.  x.  8. 

"  Lord,  even  the  devils  are  subject  to  us  in  Thy  name." — LUKE  x.  17. 

"In  My  name  shall  they  cast  out  devils." — MARK  xiv.  17. 

THE  first  of  these  three  quotations  is  the  command  which 
Christ  gave  to  His  seventy  disciples  when  He  sent  them 
two  and  two  before  His  face  to  preach  His  kingdom  and 
prepare  the  way  for  His  coming.  The  second  is  the  report 
brought  back  to  Him  by  the  disciples  who  had  believed 
His  word  and  obeyed  His  bidding.  The  third  is  the 
prophecy  which  He  spake  to  His  twelve  apostles  when 
He  had  risen  from  the  dead  and  was  leaving  them  His  last 
commands.  Do  not,  I  entreat  you,  my  brethren,  escape 
the  cogency  of  these  words  of  Christ  by  taking  refuge  in 
those  conventional  glosses  which  make  nine-tenths  even  of 
the  Gospels  so  utterly  unreal  to  us.  Do  not,  I  entreat 
you,  say  in  your  hearts,  "  Oh !  this  is  only  a  command  to 
work  miracles,  and  miracles  have  long  since  ceased  ";  or, 
"Oh!  this  is  only  a  command  of  Christ  to  His  apostles,  and 
•our  circumstances  are  very  different,  and  at  the  best  the  in- 
junction has  only  some  sort  of  significance  for  the  clergy"; 
or,  again,  do  not  say:  "We  don't  know  anything  about  de- 
moniac possession.  The  Jews  seem  to  have  assigned  to  the 
direct  agency  of  evil  spirits  what  in  these  days  we  call 
epilepsy  and  lunacy,  and  soon!"  Ah!  my  brethren,  thus 
it  is  that,  by  mere  literary  and  exegetical  controversies, 
which  have  in  reality  only  the  most  distant  bearing  on 
religion, —  thus  it  is  that  we  empty  the  significance  of 


NATIONAL  DUTIES. 


55 


Christ's  most  precious  words.  These  questions  about 
demoniacal  possession,  and  so  forth,  have  no  bearing  what- 
ever on  the  tremendous  practical  reality  of  the  question 
whether  we  are,  or  are  not,  obedient  to  Christ's  law, 
whether  we  are,  or  are  not,  living  in  accordance  with  His 
righteousness.  Never  limit  His  commands.  What  He 
spake  to  His  apostles  He  spake  to  His  church,  He  spake 
to  all.  Bsyond  the  sacred  functions  of  worship,  and 
religious  guidance,  and  the  due  administration  of  the 
sacraments,  whatever  is  the  duty  of  the  clergy  is  the  duty 
of  the  laity  as  well.  Never  let  the  Christian  laity  su- 
pinely betray  their  privileges  or  lazily  abnegate  their 
sacred  duties.  Ye  are  all,  if  you  will,  children  of  the 
Most  High;  God,  if  ye  will,  hath  made  you  all  kings 
and  priests.  Would  to  God  that,  like  Eldad  and  Medad, 
ye  all  prophesied!  Would  to  God  that  you  were  not  sat- 
isfied to  leave  so  much  as  you  do  —  the  serving  of  tables, 
the  administration  of  charity,  the  work  of  mercy —  in  the 
hands  of  the  clergy!  Would  to  God  that  so  many  of  you, 
Christian  men  and  Christian  women,  were  not  content  to 
do  nothing  at  all  and  give  nothing  at  all ;  and  so  many  more 
were  not  content  to  be  charitable  only  by  proxy,  charitable 
only  by  organizations,  only  by  machinery,  only  by  drop- 
ping here  and  there,  or  not  even  dropping,  a  promiscuous 
shilling  or  penny,  the  absence  of  which  will  not  cost  you 
one  ribbon  or  one  cigar  the  less!  Oh  that  you,  the  laity, 
even  the  church-going  laity,  of  the  great  Church  of  Eng- 
land, felt  that  the  elevation  of  the  tone  of  society,  the  puri- 
fying of  literature,  the  evangelization  of  heathendom,  the 
education  of  the  people,  the  sympathy  with  suffering,  the 
struggle  against  iniquity,  were  every  whit  as  much  your 
work  individually  as  they  are  ours;  more  your  work  collec- 


56  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

tively,  inasmuch  as  you  are  a  thousand  times  more  numer- 
ous. Into  these  points  I  have  no  time  to  enter  now.  But 
this  I  say, —  to  this  I  would  earnestly  call  your  attention, 
—  that  to  you,  to  every  one  of  you,  no  less  than  to  the 
clergy,  comes  the  command,  "Cast  out  devils";  to  you, 
to  every  one  of  you,  no  less  than  to  the  clergy,  the 
prophecy,  "In  My  name  shall  they  cast  out  devils";  for 
you,  for  every  one  of  you,  if  only  you  be  not  faithless  but 
believing,  shall  come  the  rapturous  and  astonished  acknow- 
ledgement, "Lord,  even  the  devils  are  subject  unto  us 
through  Thy  name."  And,  therefore,  I  repeat  to  you,  in 
our  Master's  name,  as  our  Master's  message, —  I  repeat  to 
you,  all  the  more  solemnly  the  command, —  "Cast  out 
devils." 

But,  beginning  with  one  consent  to  make  excuse,  you 
will  perhaps  say,  "To  cast  out  devils  was  a  miracle,  and 
miracles  have  ceased."  Yes:  that  is  one  of  the  ways  in 
which  we  paralyze  Christianity  into  a  dead  religion,  hav- 
ing first  frozen  it  into  a  hard  and  abstract  orthodoxy, 
utterly  remote  from  our  daily  life.  It  is  true  that  to  cast 
out  devils  was  a  miracle;  but,  except  for  those  who,  like 
ourselves,  are  "fools  and  slow  of  heart  to  believe,"  miracles 
have  not  ceased.  Miracles  have  not  ceased:  it  \sfaith  that 
has  ceased.  Well  might  the  timid,  wavering  disciples  ask 
Christ,  when  they  had  failed  in  the  case  of  the  demoniac 
boy,  "Why  could  not  we  cast  him  out?"  and  clearly  the 
explanation  came:  "Because  of  your  unbelief.  For  verily 
I  say  unto  you,  If  ye  have  faith  as  a  grain  of  mustard-seed, 
ye  shall  say  unto  this  mountain,  Remove  hence  to  yonder 
place,  and  it  shall  remove;  and  nothing  shall  be  impossi- 
ble unto  you."  I  have  somewhere  read  that  two  centuries 
and  a  half  ago,  in  Geneva,  its  good  bishop,  St.  Francis  de 


NATIONAL  DUTIES. 


57 


Sales,  was  walking  in  the  streets,  when  he  saw  confined, 
in  a  sort  of  iron  cage,  a  priest  who  had  become  a  raving 
maniac, —  the  Evangelists  might  have  said,  and  perhaps 
quite  as  accurately,  a  raving  demoniac.  For  a  few  mo- 
ments, in  tears  and  with  deep  emotion,  the  good  bishop 
watched  the  frightful  spectacle,  and  then,  with  one  intense 
victorious  prayer,  strong  in  faith  and  love,  he  boldly  en- 
tered the  cage,  took  the  dangerous  maniac  by  the  hand,  and 
saying,  "Come  home  with  me,  my  poor  brother,"  instantly 
calmed  his  paroxysms,  and  led  him  away  in  his  right  mind, 
gentle  and  quiet  as  a  lamb.  Whether  you  call  this  a  mira- 
cle or  not  I  care  not,  but  I  think  that  the  Evangelists, 
knowing  all  that  Christ  had  promised,  would  have  called 
it  so  ;  and  rightly  called  it,  for  it  was  a  miracle,  and  one 
which  you  and  I  would  probably  have  been  too  faithless  to 
work.  It  was  a  miracle  of  perfect  faith,  a  miracle  of 
spiritual  ascendency,  a  miracle  of  irresistible  gentleness. 
And  we,  if  we  had  the  same  strong  faith,  the  same  burning 
love,  —  we,  too,  by  the  aid  of  Him  who  said,  "Lo,  I  am  with 
you  alway,  even  to  the  end  of  the  world," — we,  too,  might 
work  these  and  the  like  miracles.  Not  in  our  own  name, 
not  of  our  own  power.  If  we  attempt  that,  we  shall  be  as 
deservedly  battered  and  beaten  back  as  were  the  seven  sons 
of  one  Sceva,  a  Jew;  and  the  devils,  and  those  possessed 
with  them,  will  say  to  us  with  just  contempt,  "Jesus  I 
know,  and  Paul  I  recognize;  but  ye,  religious  squabblers, 
easy  livers,  selfish  money-getters, —  ye,  of  the  earth  earthy, 
of  the  world  worldly, —  who  are  ye?"  But,  if  we  set  to  the 
task  in  Christ's  name,  in  Christ's  power,  in  the  strength 
of  Christ's  life,  we,  too,  weak  and  worthless  as  we  are, 
shall  feel  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  from  on  high,  and 
may  yet  live  to  say,  "Lord,  even  the  devils  are  subject 
unto  us." 


ij  8  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Alas!  the  devils  which  I  would  urge  you  to  help  in 
casting  out  to-day  are  far,  far  harder  to  deal  with  than 
those  which  seize  possession  of  individual  souls.  They 
are  the  devils  of  national  temptation,  the  devils  of  na- 
tional apostasy,  evil  spirits  which  ride  abroad  in  legions 
upon  the  darkened  air,  the  rulers  of  spiritual  wickedness 
in  many  places,  alike  high  and  low,  whose  work  is  the 
overthrow  of  men.*  Call  them  devils  or  not,  they  are, 
at  any  rate,  pestilent  vapours  which  diffuse  themselves 
through  the  age,  and  insinuate  their  venom  into  the  heart, 
corrupting,  subtly  and  imperceptibly,  the  soul  of  nations. 
Men  are  too  often  unaware  of  them,  because  they  avail 
themselves  of  the  current  of  human  inclinations.  They  hurl 
their  victims  over  the  precipice  on  the  side  towards  which 
they  naturally  lean.  With  deep  and  inventive  hatred  they 
change  harmless  customs  into  deadly  temptations,  they 
stimulate  natural  desires  into  reckless  passions,  until  —  by 
clever  epigrams,  by  popular  sophisms,  by  specious  hypoc- 
risies, by  gilded  bribes  —  they  have  moulded  to  their  own 
purposes  the  very  spirit  of  the  time.  They  come  in  the 
guise  of  indignant  virtues,  of  Scripture  precedents,  of  pru- 
dential respectabilities.  That  is  why  it  is  so  difficult  to 
cast  them  out.  That  is  why  so  many  a  possessed  nation, 
pleading  in  vain  for  its  demoniac  sons,  seeing  them  flung 
oft-times  into  the  fire  and  into  the  water,  has  been  forced 
to  moan  aloud  to  its  Lord  in  heaven,  "  I  spake  unto  Thy 
disciples  that  they  should  cast  out  this  demon,  and  they 
could  not."  That  is  why  those  who,  in  any  degree,  try  to 
cast  them  out,  are  sneered  down  as  fanatics  and  Pharisees; 
and,  because  the  many  will  not  stir  so  much  as  a  finger 
to  do  herein  their  duty,  the  few,  weary  and  sick  at  heart, 

•Operatio  eorum  est  hominis  eversio. —  Tert.  Apol.  »a. 


NATIONAL  DUTIES. 


59 


hurl  themselves  against  national  sins  in  vain.  Yet,  at 
least,  you  shall  be  once  more  reminded  of  your  Lord's 
express  command,  "In  My  name  cast  out  devils." 

And  of  these  evil  spirits  I  would  name,  first,  the  devil 
of  Intemperance.  My  brethren,  it  is  perfectly  easy  for 
you,  if  you  like,  to  pooh-pooh  the  whole  subject;  to  quote 
Scripture  to  prove  the  blessing  of  drink,  though  there  is 
ten  times  as  much  Scripture  to  warn  against  its  curse. 
All  this  is  perfectly  natural.  It  rises  in  part  from  the 
selfishness  which  hates  to  be  disturbed  in  its  own  indul- 
gences; in  part  from  profound  ignorance  of  the  entire  sub- 
ject; in  part  from  laziness;  in  part  from  conceit.  In 
taking  such  a  line,  you  are  only  doing  exactly  what  your 
fathers  did  when  they  upheld  the  blessedness  of  the  slave- 
trade;  or  denounced  the  spread  of  education;  or  defended 
the  burning  of  all  who  did  not  agree  with  them;  or 
upheld  the  "manly  pastimes  "  of  prize-fighting  and  bear- 
baiting;  or  proved  from  the  Bible  that  the  world  was  flat. 
But  things,  for  all  that,  are  as  they  are;  and  no  amount  of 
ignorance  or  of  indifference,  will  alter  the  plain,  glaring, 
patent  fact  that  the  present  conditions  of  our  drink  traffic, 
and  the  drink  it  sells  and  the  drunkenness  which  results 
from  it,  are  the  direct  source  of  untold  disease;  of  wide- 
spread lunacy;  of  immense  and  premature  mortality;  of 
nearly  all  that  there  is  of  pauperism;  of  domestic  misery 
so  deep  and  bitter  that  it  is  fully  known  to  God  only;  of 
a  stunted  population  cursed  with  a  diseased  appetite  and 
an  hereditary  crave;  of  nearly  every  act  of  brutal  atrocity 
committed  in  England;  of  nine-tenths  of  all  our  existing 
crime.  It  is  drunkenness  and  the  love  of  drink  which 
sours  the  temper,  which  inflames  the  passions,  which  brutal- 
izes the  hearts,  which  obliterates  the  affections  of  myriads. 


6o  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

There  is  no  enormity  of  blasphemy  in  language,  or  of  cruelty 
in  action,  to  which  it  may  not  goad  even  the  naturally 
gentle.  At  this  moment,  in  this  city,  there  are  not  hun- 
dreds merely,  but  thousands  —  ay,  and  I  fear  tens  of  thou- 
sands —  of  houses  in  which,  because  of  drink  and  of  drunk- 
enness, and  to  gratify  the  artificially  created  crave  for 
drink,  children  are  being  left  ragged  and  starving,  or 
wives  are  being  beaten,  or  daughters  are  being  driven 
into  shame.  And  this  curse,  against  which  well-nigh 
every  Judge  upon  the  bench  has  uttered  his  stern  indict- 
ment, is  now  strong  in  possession,  intrenched  in  social 
customs,  defended  by  all  the  force  of  the  incomes  it 
creates  and  the  interest  which  it  commands.  Well,  if 
England  perishes  of  this  her  besetting  sin  of  drunken- 
ness, she  must  not,  she  will  not  perish,  unwarned. 

The  devil  of  Excess  may  hide  behind  the  wings  of  the 
angel  of  Moderation,  or  shoot  his  fiery  arrows  from  under 
the  stainless  shield  of  Liberty,  "hung  up  as  the  signboard 
of  the  gin-palace";  but  England  must  cast  out  this  devil. 
She  must  cease  to  recruit  her  ghastly  procession  of  600, 
ooo  drunkards;  must  cease  to  spend  ;£i 50,000,000  a  year 
on  alcohol;  must  cease  to  multiply  her  maddening  tempta- 
tions precisely  where  the  power  of  resistance  is  at  the 
minimum ;  must  train  her  working  classes  not  to  soak  away 
a  degraded  leisure, —  squandering  honest  earnings  in  the 
smoke  of  tobacco  and  investing  them  on  the  ruin  of 
disease;  must  cease  to  "girdle  the  groaning  globe  with  a 
zone  of  drunkenness  " ;  must  cease  to  be  the  most  intem- 
perate of  nations.  Else,  as  her  pleasant  vices  are  now 
the  instruments  to  scourge,  so  shall  they  be  the  engine  to 
destroy  her;  and,  as  it  was  in  the  days  of  Noah,  so  she  may 
be  eating  and  drinking  when  the  deluge  of  her  calamity 


NATIONAL  DUTIES.  6 1 

shall  come.  For  the  day  comes,  sooner  or  later,  when 
devils  are  driven  into  the  abyss,  and  the  pit  swallows  them 
and  those  whom  they  possess.  And  you,  whether  you  will 
hear  or  whether  you  will  forbear,  He  who  said  to  His 
disciples,  "In  My  name  cast  out  devils,"  says  to-day, —  says 
to  England,  says  to  you,— "Do  your  duty,  do  your  part,  in 
casting  out  the  devil  of  intemperance." 

And  there  is  another  devil, —  not  yet  universal,  not 
yet  so  apparently  irresistible,  not  yet  intrenched  in  the 
citadel  of  selfish  interests,  but  which  has  of  late  years 
reared  his  head  among  us,  and  is  daily  gaining  ground, — 
the  devil  of  Lying.  Strange,  you  will  say!  Are  we  not 
a  nation  of  truth-tellers?  Is  not  an  Englishman's  word 
as  good  as  his  bond?  "Truth-teller  was  our  own  English 
Alfred  named;  Truth-lover  was  our  English  Duke."  Ay, 
and  long  may  it  be  so;  or  let  us  die,  or,  like  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers,  shake  from  off  our  feet  the  dust  of  our  shores, 
rather  than  see  the  day  of  England's  shame!  And  yet  a 
great  statesman  said  the  other  day  that  there  was  "a 
lying  spirit  abroad."  And  I  will  tell  you,  my  brethren, 
what  is  very  nearly  akin  to  lies,  and  what  seems  every  day 
to  be  growing  more  popular  in  the  midst  of  us,  if  we  may 
judge  by  what  we  daily  read  and  by  what  we  daily  see; 
and  that  is  gossip,  scandal,  spite,  libel,  eavesdropping, 
tattle,  slander,  calumny,  envy,  hatred,  malice,  and  all  un- 
charitableness.  It  is  what  one  has  called  a  spreading 
leprosy.  "Truly,"  as  Edmund  Burke  exclaimed,  "the  age 
of  chivalry  is  gone.  The  unbought  grace  of  life  is  gone. 
...  It  is  gone, —  that  sensibility  of  principle,  that  chastity 
of  honor."  Let  us  only  hope  that  what  a  living  prophet 
calls  "the  age  of  bronze  and  lacquer,  the  age  of  animal- 
isms and  mendacities,"  has  not  begun.  Alien  from  all  mag- 


62  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

nanimity,  alien  from  all  that  is  great  and  noble,  alien,  one 
used  to  think,  from  the  very  conception  of  a  gentleman, — 
how  alien  slander  is  from  anything  remotely  resembling 
the  spirit  of  a  Christian,  I  need  not  tell  you.  "'They 
say'  is  half  a  liar";  and  "they  say"  is  becoming  more 
and  more  the  staple  of  I  know  not  how  many  purveyors 
to  the  diseased  appetite  of  a  prurient  curiosity.  Nor  is 
it  a  valid  excuse  when  the  lie  happens  to  contain  any  grain 
or  shadow  of  the  truth :  — 

"  For  a  lie  which  is  half  the  truth  is  ever  the  greatest  of  lies, 
Since  a  lie  which  is  all  a  lie  may  be  met  and  fought  with  outright, 
But  a  lie  which  is  half  the  truth  is  a  harder  matter  to  fight." 

And,  indeed,  I  hardly  know  which  is  the  baser  and  more 
devilish, —  to  probe,  out  of  sheer  malice,  the  half-healed 
wounds  (it  may  be)  of  the  guilty,  or  to  fling  mud  on  the  fair 
name  of  the  innocent.  It  is  not  only  that  this  cruel  spirit 
is  now  assuming  a  definite  head  and  front  as  a  new  phenom- 
enon, in  literature,  but  it  even  reflects  itself  in  more  honor- 
able quarters, —  in  the  mutual  recriminations  and  virulent 
animosities  of  party  politics;  in  the  reckless  imputation  of 
the  meanest  motives,  bandied  unblushingly  as  an  element 
in  the  maintenance  of  differing  opinions;  even  in  the  gross 
injustice  and  reckless  misrepresentations  of  so-called  "re- 
ligious" newspapers.  Let  every  honorable  man  and  every 
honorable  writer  help  in  casting  out  this  devil  from 
amongst  us,  if  England  would  not  see  her  brave,  true  sons 

—  not  merely  gray-headed  route  and  worn-out  men  of  the 
world,  with  hearts  as  callous  as  the  nether  millstone,  after 
worthless  lives,  but  even  young  men  who  should  know  bet- 
ter, and  should  not  yet  have  lost  all  the  generosity  of  youth, 

—  if  England  would  not  see  men  who,  a  little  time  ago, 


NATIONAL  DUTIES.  63 

would  have  blushed  to  repeat  a  slander  or  disseminate  a 
gossip,  beginning  to  be  eager 

"  To  catch  a  loathly  plume  fall'n  from  the  wing 
Of  that  foul  bird  of  rapine,  whose  whole  prey 
Is  man's  good  name,"  — 

then  it  is  time,  ere  a  new  year  dawns,  to  bid  England  cast 
out  the  lying  spirit  from  the  midst  of  her,  if  she  would  not 
have  even  her  king's  chambers  invaded  by  legions  of  Styx 
and  Acheron,  the  abhorred  children  of  hatred  and  of  spite. 
"In  My  name  cast  out  devils."  There  is  yet  a  third 
evil  spirit,  whose  dark  wings  have  brooded  of  late  over  our 
national  life.  There  is  another  sin  which  disputes  with 
drunkenness  the  claim  to  be  the  besetting  sin  of  this  great 
people:  it  is  Avarice.  No  wonder  that  St.  James  calls  it 
a  root  of  all  kinds  of  evil;  for  covetousness  is  idolatry, 
and  idolatry  of  gold  is  indifference  to  God.  If  God  gives 
us  riches,  let  us  at  least  strive  rightly  to  use  this  unright- 
eous Mammon.  But  it  is  at  best  a  doubtful  blessing,  and 
many  make  it  a  deadly  curse.  When  you  hear  the  "Woe 
unto  them  that  lay  house  to  house"  of  Isaiah,  or  the  "Woe 
unto  you,  rich  men,"  of  St.  James,  perhaps  you  set  it  down 
as  prophetic  fanaticism;  but  dare  you  so  make  light  of  the 
words  of  Christ  when  he  says,  "Blessed  are  the  poor,"  or, 
"Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon,"  or,  "How  hardly 
shall  they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God  "  ? 
Which  of  us  all  believes  enough  to  say  with  Luther?  "O 
my  most  dear  God,  I  thank  Thee  that  Thou  hast  made  me 
poor,  and  a  beggar  upon  earth"?  Is  there  not  folly,  and 
worse  than  folly,  is  there  not  guilt,  in  this  greedy  pursuit 
of  gold?  When  Napoleon  called  us  contemptuously  "a 
nation  of  shopkeepers,"  we  scorned  the  taunt,  because  we 


64  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

knew  that  honorable  commerce  is  a  blessing  to  mankind. 
But  woe  to  the  nation  that  takes  to  dishonorable  commerce! 
Woe  to  any  nation  which,  having  won  the  markets  of  the 
world  by  honest  industry,  loses  them  by  that  hasting  to  be 
rich  which  never  is,  and  never  can  be,  innocent, —  by  infe- 
rior goods,  by  dishonest  contrivances,  by  scamped  work,  by 
diminished  industry,  by  fraudulent  imitations,  by  adul- 
terated products,  by  the  false  weights  and  the  unjust  bal- 
ance which  are  an  abomination  to  the  Lord!  Woe  to  any 
nation  which,  in  the  fever  of  competition  and  the  greed  of 
gain,  will  defraud  a  myriad  consumers  to  enrich  one  pro- 
ducer; which  prefers  undue  returns  to  fair  profits;  which 
will  pinch  the  miserable  earnings  of  the  workmen  to  swell 
the  bursting  coffers  of  the  millionaire;  which  will  destroy 
tons  of  good  food  which  God  has  given  rather  than  lower 
an  artificial  price.  Every  eleven  years  we  are  told  we  must 
expect  a  commercial  crisis;  a  sort  of  broken  imposthume, 
to  relieve  the  diseased  system;  a  thunder-storm  of  ruin,  to 
purge  the  air  of  the  pestilence  of  greed.  Is  there  nothing 
to  learn  from  this  present  distress,  of  which  all  newspapers 
are  full?  When  God's  judgments  are  abroad,  shall  not  the 
people  of  England  learn  wisdom?  Shall  we  do  nothing  to 
avert  a  crash  which,  if  the  same  causes  work  on  unchecked, 
may  some  day  drag  down  the  whole  country  with  it,  in 
some  great  ring  of  dishonest  combination,  some  intricate 
network  of  interminable  fraud?  When,  amid  rotten  busi- 
nesses and  reckless  speculations,  the  very  wind  "like  a 
broken  worldling  wails,  and  the  flying  gold  of  the  ruined 
woodlands  drives  through  the  air";  when,  on  Manchester 
Exchange,  a  gentleman  can  show  a  roll  of  paper,  yards 
long,  of  the  year's  bankruptcies  and  liquidations;  when 
we  are  told  that  4,079  such  failures  have  occurred  in  the 


NATIONAL  DUTIES.  65 

last  thirteen  weeks  alone;  when  men  who  have  grown  gray 
amid  the  world's  esteem  —  elders  in  churches,  Sunday- 
school  teachers,  rigid  Sabbatarians,  attenders  of  prayer- 
meetings — can  invest  in  gambling  securities,  produce  cooked 
balance  sheets,  publish  falsified  accounts,  enter  bad  debts 
as  good  assets,  issue  splendid  dividends  to  conceal  hopeless 
and  ruinous  bankruptcy,  who  shall  dare  to  say  that  he,  too, 
may  not  be  tempted  to  descend  from  carelessness  to  culpa- 
bility, from  culpability  to  fraud?  In  such  an  age  do  we 
not  all  need  the  warnings  of  Christ,  lest  we  drift  from 
greed  into  peril,  and  from  peril  into  crime?  And,  oh,  the 
misery  of  the  many  caused  by  this  mean  and  guilty  money- 
hunting  of  the  few!  Oh,  this  stealing  of  the  bread  of  the 
orphan,  and  embezzlement  of  the  pittance  of  the  widow! 
Oh,  this  snatching  of  a  wicked  luxury  from  the  hard-won 
earnings  of  the  honest  through  long  years!  Oh,  this  frus- 
tration of  the  weary  work  which  has  only  been  sweetened 
by  the  love  of  wife  or  child!  But,  you  will  say,  the  guilty 
are  punished.  Not  always  here,  by  any  means;  for 

"  In  the  corrupted  currents  of  the  world 
Offence's  gilded  hand  may  shove  by  justice; 
And  oft  'tis  seen  the  wicked  prize  itself 
Buys  out  the  law.     But  'tis  not  so  above. 
There  is  no  shuffling :  there  the  action  lies 
In  his  true  nature ;  and  we  ourselves  compelled, 
Ev'n  to  the  teeth  and  forehead  of  our  faults, 
To  give  in  evidence." 

Ay!  but  for  the  nation  punishment  is  not  sufficient:  there 
must  be  reform  as  well.  If  we  are  to  listen  to  Christ's 
commands,  this  devil  of  Avarice  must  be  cast  out. 

Do  not  think,  my  brethren,  that  you  and  I  are  private 
persons,  and  so  cannot  help  to  cast  out  these  devils.     States- 


66  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

men  have,  indeed,  a  vaster  power.  Chatham  was  never 
nobler  than  when  he  thundered  and  lightened  in  defence  of 
civil  liberty  or  in  denunciation  of  savage  war;  nor  Wilber- 
force  than  when,  for  twenty  years,  amid  taunts  and  lies,  he 
fought  in  the  House  of  Commons  the  battle  of  the  slave. 
Our  fathers  have  cast  out  devils:  why  cannot  we?  The 
devil  of  Intolerance,  the  devil  of  Cruelty,  the  devil  of 
Tyranny,  have  been  cast  out ;  but  why  and  how  ?  Because 
statesmen  spoke  in  the  voice  of  nations.  The  destinies  of 
people  are  in  the  people's  hands.  Think  rightly,  speak 
bravely,  act  vigorously  in  these  matters;  and,  even  amid 
signs  of  peril,  though  the  'fingers  of  a  man's  hand  have 
written  "Mene,  Mene,  Tekel,"  they  may  yet  be  stayed 
before  they  write  "Upharsin"  on  the  wall.  First  of  all, 
let  us  have  clean  hands  ourselves.  "Thou  shalt  do  no 
murder."  "Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery."  "Thou 
shalt  not  steal."  "Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness 
against  thy  neighbor."  The  law  of  kindness,  the  law  of 
purity,  the  law  of  honesty,  the  law  of  truth, —  let  us  write 
those  commandments  of  the  Most  High  God  on  the  fleshy 
tables  of  our  hearts. 

If  a  lying  spirit  is  abroad,  let  us,  as  the  high  rule  of  the 
life,  if  not  of  the  Christian,  yet,  at  the  lowest,  of  the  gentle- 
man, "Speak  no  slander, —  no,  nor  listen  to  it";  no,  nor 
so  much  as  even  read  it;  nor  in  any  way,  directly  or  indir- 
ectly, encourage  it,  nor  inwardly  rejoice  when  others  suffer 
from  it;  but  let  us  rather  study  on  our  knees  St.  Paul's 
grand  hymn  to  that  Christian  charity  which  thinketh  no 
evil,  and  rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity,  but  rejoiceth  at  the 
truth.  If  we  do  this,  our  souls  shall  be  ready  to  sicken 
within  us  at  the  thought  of  our  being  so  base  as  to  en- 
courage, in  any  way,  the  innuendoes  of  malice  and  the  lies 
of  hate. 


NATIONAL   DUTIES.  $j 

If  the  devil  of  Drunkenness  is  abroad,  let  us  not  lead 
others  to  perish  by  permitted  things;  let  us  not  abuse  our 
personal  safety  to  perpetuate  the  causes  whence  others 
perish, —  let  us  not,  for  the  sake  of  drink  and  its  interests, 
cause  souls  to  stumble  for  whom  Christ  died. 

If  the  devil  of  Greed  and  Avarice  is  abroad,  luring 
thousands  to  shame  and  ruin  by  the  gleam  of  gold,  let  us 
cultivate  the  spirit  of  simplicity,  which  is  content  with 
little;  let  us  show  that  godliness  with  contentment  is  great 
gain;  let  us  prove  that  we  do  not  wish  to  be  of  those  who 
heap  up  treasures  for  the  last  days,  and  fatten  their  hearts 
for  the  day  of  slaughter;  let  us  not,  to  save  our  pounds  or 
our  pennies,  rob  the  poor  of  their  off  ering  and  the  Church  of 
her  due;  let  us  count  ourselves  too  high  and  our  redeemed 
souls  too  godlike  for  the  dismal,  illiberal  lives  of  base 
gettings  and  mean  spendmgs,  for  the  "petty  but  conscious 
dishonesty  which  looks  God  full  in  the  face,  and  every 
hour  of  its  day  charges  a  half-penny  too  much  for  a  pound 
of  sugar  or  a  yard  of  tape."  Oh  my  brethren,  if  at  this 
close  of  yet  another  year  we  will  but  utterly  cast  the  devils 
out  of  our  own  hearts,  by  the  aid  of  His  grace  who  died  to 
save  us  from  ourselves,  how  much  God  might  bless  us  in 
the  noble  endeavor  to  cast  out  devils^from  our  national  and 
social  life!  What  constituted,  in  fact,  the  mighty  force  of 
Luther?  Did  not  Pope  Leo  X.  hit  it  rightly  when  he 
said,  "This  German  beast  cares  nothing  for  gold"?  When 
men  are  true,  when  they  are  really  in  earnest,  when  there 
is  no  speck  of  hypocrisy  in  them,  they  become,  as  has  been 
well  said,  magnetic;  they  create  about  them  an  "epidemic 
of  nobleness  " ;  they  flash  in  upon  the  consciences  of  others 
their  own  heroic  convictions,  and  the  courage  and  con- 
stancy which  are  necessary  to  carry  them  out.  Oh  that 


68  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

some,  oh  that  many,  for  the  strengthening  of  their  own 
souls,  for  the  good  of  England,  for  the  amelioration  of  the 
world,  for  the  love  of  God,  in  the  cause  of  Christ,  would 
catch  that  sacred  flame  to-day!  Oh,  if  all  of  you  here 
assembled  could  see  these  truths,  how  vast  might  be  your 
aggregate  influence!  How  far  different  might  be  the  end 
of  this  year  from  that  year  which  closes  in  unrest  and 
gloom!  Oh  that  we  were  all  more  true  to  the  com- 
mand, "Cast  out  devils,"  and  heartier  believers  of  the 
prophecy  that  to  do  so  is  in  our  power.  Then  should  we 
also  say  to  Christ,  in  humble  exultation,  "  Lord,  the  very 
devils  are  subject  to  us  through  thy  name";  and  He 
should  answer  us:  "I  beheld  Satan  as  lightning  fall  from 
heaven.  Behold,  I  give  you  power  to  tread  over  all  the 
power  of  the  enemy,  and  nothing  shall  by  any  means  hurt 
you.  Notwithstanding  in  this  rejoice  not,  that  the  spirits 
are  subject  unto  you,  but  rather  rejoice  because  your  names 
are  written  in  heaven." 


FAITH  IN  HUMANITY. 

"  Thou  turnest  man  to  destruction ;  and  sayest,  Return  again,  ye  children  of 
men."  —  PSALM  xc.  3. 

IF  I  were  asked  to  sum  up  in  the  most  comprehensive 
manner  two  of  the  greatest  lessons  which  Christ  came  to 
teach  us,  I  think  that  they  might  be  expressed  in  these 
words,  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  Brotherhood  of  Man. 
There  is  a  vast  difference  between  Christ's  way  and  the 
world's  way  of  treating  the  individual.  Christ's  way  is 
help,  encouragement,  cheering  and  inspiring  kindliness: 
the  world's  way  is,  too  often,  spite,  envy,  injustice,  ingrati- 
tude, depreciation.  The  duties  which  the  imitation  of  Christ 
entails  upon  us  are  to  be  kind  and  unselfish  in  our  family 
circles,  to  strive  habitually  to  look  on  all  men  at  their 
best,  to  write  all  our  own  wrongs  in  water  and  in  ashes, 
and  let  them  be  to  us  as  though  they  had  never  been.  But 
our  estimate  and  our  treatment  of  the  individual  are  closely 
connected  with  our  estimate  and  treatment  of  the  whole 
race  of  man.  I  would  earnestly  endeavour  to  point  out  our 
duty  to  the  great  world  of  humanity, — to  the  communities 
to  which  we  belong,  to  the  generation  in  which  we  live, 
to  the  great  family  of  mankind  of  which  God  has  made  us 
members. 

,What  have  been,  what  are,  men's  thoughts  respecting 
the  race  of  man  ?  We  know  not  for  how  many  thousands 
of  years  our  race  may  have  lived  on  this  little  planet,  roll- 
ing and  spinning  (as  it  has  been  described)  like  an  angry 
midge  amid  the  immensities  of  space;  but  over  a  space 


7Q  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

of  forty  centuries  at  least,  in  the  pages  of  many  litera- 
tures, in  the  accents  of  many  tongues,  we  find  the  opinions 
of  men  respecting  man.  They  have  been  uttered  as  freely 
as  to-day  by  the  bards  and  prophets  of  races  long  since 
vanished,  in  languages  long  since  dead.  Man  has  ever 
been  a  mystery  to  himself.  "Who  are  you?"  asked  an 
irascible  person  who  had  been  delayed  by  running  against 
Schopenhauer  in  the  street.  "Ah!"  replied  the  philoso- 
pher: "if  you  would  tell  me  that,  if  you  would  tell  me  who 
lam,  I  would  give  you  all  I  possess  in  the  world."  To-day, 
however,  we  do  not  want  to  enter  into  transcendental  mys- 
teries. We  only  want  to  learn  what  men  have  thought  of 
man  in  his  moral,  his  spiritual,  his  religious  aspect. 

We  want  no  misereres  on  the  sorrows  of  his  experience: 
we  want  no  elegies  on  the  briefness  of  his  span.  If  we 
did,  we  might  go  back  to  Job,  "  Man  is  born  to  sorrow  as 
the  sparks  fly  upward  " ;  or  to  Homer :  — 

Like  leaves  on  trees  the  race  of  man  is  found, 
Now  green  in  youth,  now  withering  on  the  ground. 
Another  race  the  following  spring  supplies, 
They  fall  successive,  and  successive  rise:  — 
So  generations  in  their  course  decay, 
So  perish  these  when  those  have  passed  away ;  — 

or  we  might  come  down  to  Addison,  "Alas!  man  was 
made  in  vain!  how  is  he  given  away  to  misery  and  mor- 
tality! tortured  in  life,  and  swallowed  up  in  death!"  or, 
again,  to  Sir  Walter  Scott:  "And  this,  I  said,  is  the 
progress  and  the  issue  of  human  wishes !  Nursed  by  fhe 
merest  trifles,  they  are  fed  upon  hope  till  they  consume  the 
substance  which  they  inflame,  and  man,  his  hopes,  pas- 
sions, and  desires,  sink  into  a  worthless  heap  of  ashes  and 
embers!" 


FAITH  IN  HUMANITY.  ji 

Nor,  again,  do  we  want  any  eulogy  upon  the  splendour  of 
man's  powers.  If  we  did,  we  might  go  back  to  Sophocles, 
"Wondrous  are  many  things,  and  naught  is  more  wondrous 
than  man  " ;  or  we  might  come  down  to  Tennyson, — 

"  Men,  my  brothers,  men  the  workers,  ever  reaping  something  new. 
That  which  they  have  done  but  earnest  of  the  things  that  they  shall  do." 

But  what  we  rather  would  seek  to-day  is  men's  opinion 
of  the  moral  worth,  the  moral  character,  the  moral  capabil- 
ities of  man.  And  here,  strange  to  say,  we  are  confronted 
at  once  with  a  chaos  of  conflicting  judgments.  According 
to  some,  man  is  a  being  so  small,  so  intolerably  contempt- 
ible, so  radically  unjust,  mean,  and  selfish,  that  he  is  not 
worth  working  for:  he  is  not  only  "a  shadow  less  than 
shade,  a  nothing  less  than  nothing,"  but  he  is  a  creature 
essentially  allied  to  the  animal,  a  blot  on  God's  fair  crea- 
tion, a  jar  in  the  untroubled  silence,  a  discord  amid  the 
infinite  harmony,  "a  flutter  in  the  eternal  calm."  It  is 
remarkable  how  cynics  in  all  ages  have  coincided  in  this 
view.  Think  of  Diogenes  searching  in  daylight  with  a 
lantern  to  find  a  man  in  the  streets  of  Athens;  think  of 
Phocion,  when  a  passage  in  his  speech  was  applauded, 
turning  round  and  asking,  "  Have  I  said  anything  wrong, 
then?"  think  of  Pyrrho  the  atheist,  describing  men  as  a 
herd  of  swine,  rioting  on  board  a  rudderless  vessel,  in  a 
storm;  think  of  La  Rochefoucauld  reducing  even  man's 
poor  seeming  virtues  into  selfish  vices  in  thin  disguise; 
think  of  Voltaire  describing  the  multitude  as  a  compound 
of  bears  and  monkeys;  think  of  Schopenhauer  condemning 
this  as  the  worst  of  all  possible  worlds,  and  arguing  that 
man  is  a  radical  mistake;  think  of  the  more  serious  voice 
which  says, — 


72  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"  Let  the  heavens  burst  and  drown  with  deluging  rain 
The  feeble  vassals  of  lust  and  anger  and  wine, 
The  little  hearts  that  know  not  how  to  forgive." 

"However  we  brazen  it  out,  we  men  are  a  little  breed." 
But,  then,  turn  to  the  other  side, —  the  grand  and  exalted 
opinions  which  men  have  entertained  of  man.  Think  of 
Shakspeare:  "What  a  piece  of  work  is  man!  How  noble  in 
reason!  how  infinite  in  faculties!  inform  and  manner,  how 
express  and  admirable!  in  action,  how  like  an  angel!  in 
apprehension,  how  like  a  god!"  Think  of  Henry  Smith: 
"All  those  discourses  which  have  been  written  for  the  soul's 
heraldry  will  not  blazon  it  so  well  to  us  as  itself  will  do. 
When  we  turn  our  eyes  upon  the  soul,  it  will  soon  tell  us 
its  own  royal  pedigree  and  noble  extraction,  by  those 
sacred  hieroglyphics  which  it  bears  upon  itself."  Recall 
the  saying  of  Novalis:  "Man  is  the  true  Shechinah,  or 
glory  light  of  God.  We  touch  heaven  when  we  lay  our 
hands  on  that  high  form." 

And,  strange  to  say,  we  find  these  contrasted  judg- 
ments not  only  in  different  writers,  but  even  in  the 
same  writer,  expressing  himself  in  different  moods. 
"What  is  man?"  asks  David  in  one  place;  and  the 
exulting  answer  is,  "Thou  madest  him  a  little  lower  than 
the  angels;  Thou  crownest  him  with  glory  and  honour. 
Thou  madest  him  to  have  dominion  over  the  works  of  Thy 
hands;  Thou  hast  put  all  things  under  his  feet."  Yet, 
in  another  place,  the  answer  to  the  same  question  comes 
like  the  wail  of  a  sufferer,  as  though  it  were  some  voice  of 
shipwreck  on  a  shoreless  sea.  "Man  is  like  a  thing  of 
naught;  his  time  passeth  away  like  a  shadow."  That  was 
three  thousand  years  ago.  But  we  find  contrasts  no  less 
striking  in  a  writer  of  genius  to-day.  "Truly,  it  seems  to 


FAITH  IN  HUMANITY. 


73 


me,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  in  one  place,  "as  I  gather  in  my 
mind  the  evidences  of  insane  religion,  degraded  art,  merci- 
less war,  sullen  toil,  detestable  pleasure,  and  vain  or  vile 
hope  in  which  the  nations  of  the  world  have  lived  since 
first  they  could  bear  record  of  themselves, —  it  seems 
to  me,  I  say,  as  if  the  race  itself  were  still  half-serpent, 
not  yet  extricated  from  its  clay, —  a  lacertine  brood  of  bit- 
terness, the  glory  of  it  emaciate  with  cruel  hunger,  and 
blotted  with  venomous  stain,  and  the  track  of  it  on  the  leaf 
a  glittering  slime  and  in  the  sand  a  useless  furrow."  And 
yet  this  same  writer  has  said,  "One  thing  we  know,  or  may 
know  if  we  will,  that  the  heart  and  conscience  of  man  are 
divine;  that,  in  his  perception  of  evil,  in  his  recognition 
of  good,  he  is  himself  a  God  manifest  in  the  flesh."  And 
in  another  place:  "I  trust  in  the  nobleness  of  human 
nature;  in  the  majesty  of  its  faculties,  in  the  fulness  of 
its  mercy;  in  the  joy  of  its  love." 

Which,  then,  my  friends,  are  we  to  follow  of  these 
diverse  judgments?  By  which  are  we  to  be  guided  in  our 
own  dealings  with  our  fellow-men?  I  answer  with  all  my 
heart,  Take  the  nobler  and  better  view  of  mankind,  which 
is  the  Christian  view.  Think  that  Christ  loved  man  so 
much  that,  even  while  we  were  yet  sinners,  He  died  for  the 
ungodly.  Adopt  this  view  not  as  a  voluntary  illusion,  but 
as  a  living  faith.  Good  and  evil  without  end  may  be  said 
of  man ;  and  both  be  amply  borne  out  by  history  and  by 
experience.  That  is  due  to  the  fact  that  man  is  a  com- 
posite being;  that  he  partakes  of  two  natures, —  the  animal 
and  the  spiritual;  that  he  is  swayed  by  two  impulses, —  the 
evil  and  the  good;  that  he  has  in  him  two  beings, —  the 
Adam  and  the  Christ;  that  the  angel  has  him  by  the  hand 
or  the  serpent  by  the  heart ;  that 


74  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"Our  little  lives  are  kept  in  equipoise 

By  balance  of  two  opposite  desires, — 
The  struggle  of  the  impulse  that  enjoys 
And  the  more  noble  impulse  that  aspires." 

Hence  we  may  say  of  man  in  the  same  breath, — 

"  How  poor,  how  rich,  how  abject,  how  august, 
How  complicate,  how  wonderful,  is  man!" 

"Glory  and  scandal  of  the  universe,"  says  Pascal,  "the 
judge  of  angels,  a  worm  of  earth:  if  he  exalts  himself,  I 
smite  him  down;  if  he  humbles  himself,  I  lift  him  up." 
But  is  there  no  practical  reconciliation  of  these  antithe- 
ses? Yes,  my  brethren,  there  is.  Not  in  the  world,  not 
in  nature,  not  in  philosophy,  but  there  is  in  religion, 
there  is  in  Christ.  Look  at  man  in  himself,  look  at  him 
as  he  makes  himself  by  yielding  to  and  aiding  the  fraud 
and  malice  of  the  devil,  and  hardly  any  language  is  too 
bitter  to  describe  his  baseness  and  degradation;  but  look  at 
him  in  the  light  of  revelation,  look  at  him  under  the  triple 
overarching  rainbow  of  faith  and  hope  and  love,  look  at 
him  ransomed  and  ennobled  into  a  filial  relationship  with 
God,  and  you  will  see  at  once  where  men  have  learned  their 
high  faith  in  themselves,  and  who  has  taught  them  to 
speak  of  man  in  such  noble  accents.  They  have  learned 
them  from  St.  Paul:  "And  such  were  some  of  you;  but 
ye  are  washed,  but  ye  are  sanctified,  but  ye  are  justified, 
in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  in  the  Spirit  of  our 
God."  They  learned  them  from  St.  Peter:  "But  ye  are  a 
chosen  generation,  a  royal  priesthood,  a  holy  nation,  a 
peculiar  people,  that  ye  may  shew  forth  the  excellencies  of 
Him  who  called  you  out  of  darkness  into  His  marvellous 
light."  They  learned  them  from  St.  John:  "Beloved,  now 


FAITH  IN'  HUMANITY. 


75 


are  we  children  of  God,  and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be;  but  we  know  that,  when  He  shall  appear,  we  shall 
be  like  Him,  for  we  shall  see  Him  as  He  is."  They  learned 
them  most  of  all  from  Christ  Himself:  "I  say  not  unto 
you  that  I  will  pray  the  Father  for  you;  for  the  Father  him- 
self loveth  you,  because  ye  have  loved  Me,  and  have  be- 
lieved that  I  came  forth  from  God." 

I  would  urge  you  then,  my  brethren,  even  amid  life's 
most  bitter  disillusionments,  even  when  you  experience  the 
worst  proofs  of  the  world's  malice,  falsity,  and  meanness, 
still  not  to  abandon  your  faith  in  man,  or  in  God's  des- 
tinies for  man,  nor  sweetness,  nor  charity,  nor  invincible 
hopefulness.  To  lose  faith  in  man  is  to  lose  faith  in  God 
who  made  him.  To  lose  faith  in  man's  nature  is  to  lose 
faith  in  your  own.  Surely,  we  have  seen,  and  not  in 
dreams,  the  glory  of  the  Divine  on  human  countenances. 
All  men  are  not  liars.  All  friendship  is  not  feigning.  All 
virtue  is  not  prudential  egotism.  The  man  who  has  no- 
thing but  bitter  condemnation  for  human  nature  is  no  longer 
to  be  trusted:  he  is  fit  for  treasons,  stratagems,  and  spoils. 
To  be  in  a  condition  in  which  no  man  pleases  us  is  a  fatal 
sign  of  our  own  degradation.  It  is  recorded  of  two  men  in 
ancient  history  that  they  were  firmly  convinced  that  no 
human  being  was  pure;  but  who  were  those  two  men? 
They  were  the  very  vilest  men  whom  a  decaying  civilization 
ever  produced :  one  was  the  Emperor  Nero,  and  the  other 
was  the  Emperor  Heliogabalus.  Men  who  fall  into  such 
abysses  of  vile  judgment  have  become  the  enemies  and  the 
corrupters  of  their  race.  And  in  this  fact  you  have  one 
of  the  mightiest  inducements  to  personal  effort  after  good- 
ness. For  how  could  men  ever  become  so  utterly  vile  as 
to  hold  that  all  men  are  vile?  Whence  comes  the  infernal 


76  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

possibitity  of  this  debasing  pessimism,  this  utter  inca- 
pacity to  believe  in  human  nature?  It  is  never  instantane- 
ous,—  we  are  never  worst  at  once;  but  neither  again  is  it 
abnormal :  it  is  a  fearful  sequence  of  natural  retributions. 
Look  at  some  splendid  tree  with  its  crown  of  foliage  and 
flower  and  fruit,  —  a  thousand  girths  of  spring  in  its  giant 
bole,  and  a  song  on  its  every  spray;  look  at  another  tree, 
shrivelled  and  hateful,  when  the  canker-worms  have  crawled 
to  its  topmost  boughs,  and  swing  down  from  its  every  leaf; 
look  at  yet  another  tree,  blighted,  dead,  rotten,  phos- 
phorescent, covered  with  chill  and  clammy  funguses,  deathy 
and  like  a  corpse's  cheek.  Each  of  those  is  a  tree;  but 
the  one  is  a  tree  in  the  glory  and  majesty  of  its  true  being, 
because  it  has  followed  the  laws  of  strength  and  health 
and  vigor,  feeding  on  the  pure  earth  and  the  pure  air  and 
the  pure  dew;  while  the  others  are  trees  whose  very  roots 
have  been  as  rottenness,  and  their  blossoms  have  gone  up 
as  dust.  So  it  is  with  human  beings.  But,  just  as  you 
would  not  go  into  a  dead  forest  to  judge  of  the  glory  of  a 
tree,  so  neither  ought  you  to  judge  of  the  true  majesty  and 
beneficence  of  human  nature  from  that  nature  when,  having 
rotted  inwardly,  it  bourgeons  perversely  into  all  sorts  of 
poisonous  growths.  It  makes  all  the  difference  in  the 
world  whether  you  judge  mankind  from  Thersites  or  from 
Achilles;  from  a  Nero  or  from  a  Marcus  Aurelius;  from 
a  Marat  or  from  a  St.  Louis;  from  living  men,  like  one  or 
two  who  could  be  named,  or  from  the  evil  men  and  se- 
ducers, who  ever  wax  worse  and  worse,  deceiving  and  being 
deceived;  from  living  women  full  of  grace  and  meekness 
or  from  those  unmotherly  mothers  and  unwomanly  women 
who  nigh  turn  motherhood  to  shame  and  womanliness  to 
loathing.  Oh,  judge  mankind  from  the  best  and  highest! 


FAITH  IN  HUMANITY. 


77 


You  want  to  know  what 'a  glow-worm  is  like.  Which  is 
the  true  glow-worm,  the  black  insect  which  you  see  crawl- 
ing in  the  day  or  the  lustrous  emerald  of  the  starlit  bank? 
And  which  is  the  true  man,  the  man  who  is  yielding  to  foul 
distempers,  and  whose  soul  is  dimmed  with  rage  and  envy 
and  lust,  or  the  man  who,  be  it  for  a  moment,  shakes  him- 
self free  from  the  cerecloths  of  his  own  contaminating  base- 
ness to  unfold  the  wings  wrapped  within  him  and  rise  re- 
deemed from  earth? 

Look  at  man  in  his  eternal  aspect.  Look  not  at  the  feet 
of  clay,  but  at  the  golden  head  crowned  with  spiritual 
stars,  and  you  will  learn  to  say,  as  even  the  pagan  moralist 
said,  "Man  should  be  a  sacred  thing  to  man,"  and  with 
the  Christian  apostle,  "Honour  all  men." 

But  remember  at  the  same  time  that  in  each  of  us  is  the 
potentiality  of  either  development.  The  great  and  polished 
Goethe  said  that  there  was  no  crime  which  he  did  not  feel 
that  he  might  have  committed.  The  martyr,  Bradford, 
when  he  saw  the  criminal  being  led  to  the  gallows,  said, 
"There,  but  for  the  grace  of  God,  goes  John  Bradford."  It 
lies  in  our  own  power  whether  we  will  be  thus  or  thus. 
If  we  have  not  already  made  up  our  minds  to  do  the  right 
and  eschew  the  wrong,  it  can  only  be  because  already  we 
are,  in  our  secret  heart,  traitors  to  God  and  to  our  best 
selves.  Some  men  lose  all  faith,  because  they  have  deserved 
to  lose  all  faith  in  their  own  nature;  and  they  who  lose 
that  lose  also  their  faith  in  man. 

Let  us,  then,  try  to  believe  that  there  is  a  good 
side  in  every  man.  Often  in  the  most  hardened  criminals 
the  thought  of  home,  the  thought  of  a  mother,  the  thought 
of  innocent  childhood,  a  flower  which  recalls  the  memory 
of  a  better  past,  a  proof  of  confidence,  an  unlocked  for 


^g  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

kindness,  will  open  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  of  puri- 
fying emotion  and  restore  the  true  attributes  of  a  man. 
We  sometimes  read  with  amazement  how  some  one,  who 
seemed  to  be  past  all  remedy  in  abandoned  vileness,  sud- 
denly, touched  by  the  glory  of  heroism,  will  rise  to  a  great 
act  of  self-sacrifice.  We  read  of  some  poor  soldier,  whom 
his  general  has  rated  for  backwardness,  who,  bidden  to 
charge,  one  against  a  thousand, 

"  Hurls  his  soiled  life  against  the  pikes  and  dies." 

Look  at  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  look  at  the  trenches  of 
Sebastopol,  look  at  the  charge  at  Balaklava,  look  at  the 
burning  of  the  "Goliath,"  look  at  the  wreck  of  the  "Birken- 
head,"  to  see  how  the  commonest  and  coarsest  of  men  can 
recognize  the  invincible  claim  and  sovereignty  of  duty, 
even  at  the  cost  of  life.  The  world  is  not  wholly  bad. 
Amid  its  sin,  amid  its  want,  amid  its  misery,  there  move 
everywhere  the  white-winged  messengers  of  mercy.  If  you 
will  believe  in  the  natural  goodness  of  men  and  throw 
yourself  upon  it;  if  you  will  appeal  always  to  that  spirit- 
ual faculty  which  a  man  may  waste  and  desecrate,  but  never 
quite  destroy,  you  will  find  that  man's  nature  has  never 
lost  all  touch  of  its  original  brightness,  nor  seems  less 
than  archangel  ruined.  That  nature  may  often  look  like 
the  dull  waste  of  the  Alpine  mountain  side,  darkened  only 
by  the  shadows  of  its  black  and  stubborn  pines;  but  let  the 
dawn  blush  in  the  vernal  sky,  and  the  south  wind  breathe, 
and  the  sun  fire  the  high  tops  of  those  mountain  pines,  and 
the  chilled  snow  will  melt  and  vanish  under  their  soft  and 
golden  touches,  till  its  accumulated  mass  at  last  rushes 
down  in  avalanche,  and  where  yesterday  was  snow  to-day 
shall  be  green  grass  and  purple  flower. 


FAITH  IN  HUMANITY. 


79 


And,  as  another  way  to  help  us  in  retaining  our 
faith  in  human  nature,  let  us  turn  away  from  the  thought 
of  bad  men  altogether  to  that  galaxy  of  heaven  wherein 
shine  the  clustered  constellations  of  saintly  lives.  The 
saints,  in  the  long  ages,  have  not  been  few.  And  to  these 
have  been  due  the  progress,  to  these  the  ennoblement,  to 
these  the  preservation  of  the  world.  Among  all  the  bad 
passions,  among  all  the  disordered  lives  of  men,  amid  all 
their  meanness,  and  littleness,  and  emptiness,  and  egotism, 
it  is  as  water  in  the  desert  to  come,  in  life,  and  more  often 
among  the  records  of  the  dead,  on  natures  such  as  these. 
Look  on  these,  think  of  these:  do  not  think  of  the  heartless 
and  aimless  crowds  that  vegetate  without  living,  but  read  the 
lives  and  actions  of  these  few  children  of  the  light.  When 
you  would  escape  a  sense  of  suffocation  in  the  secular  or 
ecclesiastical  atmosphere  around  you;  when,  after  the  cramp 
and  torpedo-touch  of  the  world,  numbing  every  generous 
impulse,  chilling  to  death  every  ardent  aspiration,  you 
would  cause  your  spirits  once  more  to  dilate  as  it  were,  and 
"conspire  with  the  morning  wind,"  turn  from  the  dreary 
and  abhorrent  proofs  of  human  wickedness;  turn  from  the 
spectacle  of  good  men  made  the  mock  of  fools,  disliked  by 
the  envious,  abandoned  by  the  weak ;  turn  to  the  spectacle  of 
what  men  have  been  and  may  be;  turn  to  these  our  nobler 
brothers,  but  one  in  blood,  who  have  been  better  and  lived 
nearer  to  God  than  we, —  not  hollow,  grasping,  ungenerous, 
but  sincerely  and  eminently  good. 

But  above  all,  as  the  best  of  all  rules,  think  con- 
stantly of  Christ,  and  fix  your  eyes  on  Him.  "Of  what 
account,  after  all,  are  the  saints  compared  to  Christ?  They 
are,"  said  Luther,  "no  more  than  sparkling  dewdrops  of 
the  night-dew  upon  the  head  of  the  bridegroom,  scattered 


80  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

among  his  hair."  The  only  measure  of  a  perfect  man  is 
the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ.  Con- 
sider what  has  been  the  history  of  many  minds  respecting 
their  faith  in  their  fellow-men.  Many,  in  their  childhood 
and  early  youth,  have  believed  in  the  beauty,  the  sacred- 
ness,  the  tenderness,  of  humanity.  They  have  seen  it  in 
the  transfiguring  light  of  a  mother's  love.  Faith  in  all 
high  things  has  beaten  in  their  blood.  The  old  English 
poet  says  of  the  pet  white  fawn  which  died : — 

"  Had  it  lived  long,  it  would  have  been 
Lilies  without,  roses  within." 

The  same  exquisite  words  might  be  applied  at  first  to 
many  a  delicate  human  soul.  Had  it  continued  as  it  was 
in  childhood,  it  would  have  "glowed  like  the  roses  of  morn- 
ing with  enthusiasm,  and  been  white  as  the  lilies  in  its 
purity."  No  human  soul  can  retain  this  ideal  beauty  and 
freshness.;  but,  if  a  man  will  still  keep  firm  hold  on  Christ, 
though  he  may  never  recover  the  gracious  illusions  of  child- 
hood, he  may  still  look  on  his  fellow-men  as  redeemed  and 
glorified  in  the  light  of  the  Lord  he  loves. 

And,  oh!  lastly,  the  most  sure  way  to  justify  our 
faith  and  hope  in  human  nature  is  to  justify  it  in  ourselves. 
Otir  nature  is  human  nature.  If  we  feel  how  much  our 
own  nature  is  capable  of  all  nobleness  and  self-sacrifice;  if 
we  feel  that  we  cannot  breathe  the  stifling  air  of  sin  and 
shame,  then  we  shall  soon  learn  to  feel  that  God  has  cre- 
ated man  for  holiness,  as  the  trees  of  the  forest  for  light. 
There  could  be  no  such  compound  misery,  no  such  disease 
and  deformity  —  physical,  moral,  and  intellectual — as 
exists  around  us,  without  violation  on  violation  of  eternal 
laws.  Ah!  but  let  not  us  become  "stockholders  in  this 


FAITH  IN  HUMANITY.  8 1 

sin,"  and  so  add  to  the  necessary  expiation!  Has  not  your 
contempt  for  human  nature,  your  despair  of  human  nature, 
a  terrible  secret  ally  in  your  own  heart?  Turn  out  the  idols 
thence,  cleanse  the  precincts,  expel  the  creeping  things,  in- 
troduce the  light  of  heaven  into  its  darkest  corners,  make 
it  a  temple  of  the  living  God,  and  then  you  will  see  that 
the  sanctuary  in  your  own  heart  can  be  built  no  less  in 
every  other.  If  you  would  raise  others,  live  yourself  as  on 
a  mountain,  live  yourself  as  on  a  promontory.  Say  "What- 
ever happens,  I  must  be  good,"  even  as  though  the  emerald 
or  the  purple  should  say,  "Whatever  happens,  I  must  be 
emerald  and  keep  my  colour." 

If  we  believe  in  good,  not  in  evil,  if  we  look  to  the  good 
men  and  not  to  bad,  if  we  make  our  own  moral  being  our 
prime  care,  we,  too,  can  make  one  man  a  Christian,  and  all 
that  a  man  and  all  that  a  Christian  ought  to  be, —  one  man; 
and  that  is  ourselves.  We  can  do  this:  we  can  do  all 
things,  through  Christ  who  strengtheneth  us.  And  when 
we  have  attained  to  this  pious  and  just  reverence  for  our 
own  souls,  we  shall  learn  no  less  to  honour  all  men,  because 
the  Lord  Christ  despaired  neither  of  man,  nor  of  human- 
ity; but  for  all  no  less  than  for  ourselves  Christ  died. 


TRIALS  OF  THE  POOR. 

"  Blessed  is  he  that  considereth  the  poor  and  the  needy." —  PSALM  xli.  i. 

THERE  never  has  been  an  age,  since  the  world  was,  in 
which  there  has  not  been  a  contrast  between  the  lots  of  the 
poor  and  the  rich.  But  in  southern  and  eastern  lands, 
where  life  is  easily  maintained,  poverty  is  never  so  press- 
ing as  in  lands  like  ours.  The  life  of  England  is  unfortu- 
nately becoming  a  city  life;  and  it  is  in  cities  —  above  all, 
in  great  cities  —  that  the  contrast  becomes  most  glaring, 
and  the  distress  at  times  so  ghastly  as  to  madden  the  mul- 
titude with  a  sense,  however  blind,  of  intolerable  wrong. 
And,  when  this  is  the  case,  it  has  often  been  the  sign  of 
social  decay,  the  omen  of  impending  ruin.  What  was  one 
cause  of  the  downfall  of  ancient  Rome?  "  Latifundia,"  says 
Pliny,  "perdidere  Italiam."  What  was  the  cause  of  the 
French  Revolution?  The  hard  reality  of  inexpressible  mis- 
ery "brushed  by  the  rustling  masquerade"  of  careless  lux- 
ury. One  day,  as  Louis  XV.  was  hunting  in  the  wood  of 
Senart,  away  from  his  gorgeous  and  guilty  Palace  of  Ver- 
sailles, he  met  a  ragged  peasant  with  a  coffin.  "What  did 
the  man  die  of?"  asked  the  king.  "Of  hunger,"  answered 
the  serf;  and  the  king  gave  his  steed  the  spur.  When 
Foulon  was  asked  how  the  overtaxed  people  were  to  live, 
he  brutally  answered,  "Let  them  eat  grass."  Afterwards 
the  mob,  maddened  into  wild  beasts,  caught  him  in  the 
streets  of  Paris,  and  hung  him,  and  stuck  his  head  on  a 
pike,  the  mouth  filled  with  grass,  "amid  sounds  as  of 
Tophet  from  a  grass-eating  people." 


TRIALS  OF  THE  POOR.  83 

What  is  history  but  a  reflection  of  the  experiences  of 
the  past  for  the  warning  of  the  future?  In  these  days 
it  is  the  duty  not  only  of  every  Christian,  but  of  every 
patriot,  of  every  lover  of  his  fellow-men,  to  think  often  and 
seriously  of  his  duties  to  the  poor.  Whether  distress  is 
more  or  less  universal  than  in  past  days  is  a  question 
which  we  need  not  consider.  Suffice  it  for  our  duty  and 
our  sympathy  that  distress  there  is;  and  for  Christians  the 
sight  of  the  suffering  is  an  appeal  from  Christ  himself. 

In  a  society  so  complicated  as  ours  the  change  of  a 
fashion,  the  shifting  of  a  tax,  the  accident  of  a  discovery, 
the  alteration  of  a  line  of  commerce,  may  affect  the  liveli- 
hood of  thousands.  The  numbers  of  the  unemployed  may 
be  exaggerated,  and  the  fact  of  being  unemployed  may,  in 
many  cases,  result  from  untrustworthiness  and  miscon- 
duct. Still  there  are  in  this  city  thousands  who  are  out  of 
work,  and  I  will  quote  to  you  from  the  pamphlet  of  a 
Socialist  what  this  means.  It  means  "to  gradually  sell  or 
pawn  the  few  sticks  of  furniture  which  convert  the  single 
room  into  a  home;  to  blister  the  feet  in  walking  in  search 
of  work,  while  hope  deferred  makes  the  heart  sick  and 
want  of  nourishment  enfeebles  the  frame;  to  see  your  wife 
sinking  for  lack  of  food,  and  send  your  children  to  school 
without  breakfast ;  to  know  that,  as  you  grow  each  day  more 
gaunt  in  face,  more  shabby  in  appearance,  more  emaciated 
in  physique,  there  is  less  and  less  chance  of  obtaining 
employment;  to  return,  faint  and  footsore,  after  a  long 
day's  tramp,  and  hear  those  you  love  best  on  earth  crying 
for  food ;  to  ponder,  in  cold  and  hunger,  whether  the  theft 
which  would  save  your  family  from  starvation  is  a  crime 
or  a  duty;  to  be  restrained  from  suicide  only  by  the  cer- 
tainty that  your  death  must  drive  your  helpless  daughters 


84  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

to  swell  the  ghastly  army  of  degraded  womanhood;  to  feel 
drawing  ever  nearer  the  day  when  you  will  be  driven  alone 
into  the  living  tomb  of  the  workhouse;  to  feel  through  all 
this  that  you  have  done  nothing  to  deserve  it."  That  is 
what  it  means  to  be  out  of  work,  and  the  picture  is  not 
exaggerated.  I  claim  your  attention,  I  claim  the  atten- 
tion of  the  nation  to  it.  And  the  question  at  once  arises, 
If  there  be  this  deep  distress,  how  is  it  to  be  remedied? 

Let  us  see  how  nations  and  classes  sometimes  deal 
with  it. 

Sometimes  —  and  this  is  the  very  worst  and  basest 
way  of  all — they  treat  it  with  neglect  and  indifference, 
shut  their  eyes  hard  to  it,  ignore  it  altogether. 

This  most  fatal  course  is  possible,  but  not  for  long.  It 
is  possible,  for  a  time,  for  men  to  make  colossal  fortunes 
by  grinding  the  faces  of  the  poor;  to  surround  themselves 
with  every  form  of  luxury;  to  make  the  calendar  of  the  year 
one  round  of  careless,  heartless,  selfish  dissipation;  to  be 
indifferent  to  the  fermenting  mass  of  unhappy  human 
beings  around  them;  to  encourage  the  traffickers  in  drink, 
and  poison,  and  lust,  and  death,  and  spurious  excitement, 
until  the  society  beneath  them  is  as  "an  accumulation  of 
Dead  Sea  wreckage."  So  it  was  in  the  France  of  1750, 
the  population  growing  daily  more  and  more  wretched, 
more  and  more  vicious,  more  and  more  ferociously  sullen, 
more  and  more  madly  discontented,  till  the  low  moan  and 
mutter  of  miserable  humanity  burst  forth  into  the  roar  of 
the  flood  and  the  typhoon.  Of  all  courses  which  a  nation, 
and  its  rich,  and  its  rulers  can  take,  the  indifference  to 
social  problems,  the  neglect  of  social  problems,  the  mere 
laissez-faire  as  to  social  problems,  is  the  most  insensate 
and  the  most  base. 


TRIALS   OF   THE   POOR.  8$ 

Another  way  of  dealing  with  distress  is  the  sudden 
adoption  of  spasmodic,  ill-considered,  panic-stricken  reme- 
dies, which  only  intensify  the  virulence  of  the  disease.  It 
is  like  the  policy  of  Ethelred  the  Unready  in  buying  off 
the  incursions  of  the  Danes. 

One  of  the  worst  and  commonest  of  remedies,  a  remedy 
altogether  temporary  and  contemptible,  is  that  of  indis- 
criminate dole-giving.  It  is  the  perpetual  feeding  of  a 
foul  disease.  It  neglects  the  sufferers  to  support  the 
rogues.  The  person  who,  without  inquiry,  gives  his 
money  to  the  hypocritic  whine  and  lying  tale  of  profes- 
sional beggars,  is  flinging  it  away  in  the  encouragement  of 
lazy  imposture.  Such  mercy  is  not  mercy:  it  is  pure  self- 
ishness. It  is  twice  cursed :  it  curses  him  who  gives  and 
him  who  takes.  There  are  classes  of  the  community  whom 
it  is  a  simple  wrong  to  the  community,  and  to  themselves, 
to  encourage  in  their  worthlessness.  The  roughs,  the  crimi- 
nals, the  professional  pickpockets  and  burglars,  who  make 
life  a  terror  to  myriads  of  unprotected  households;  the 
blear,  blaspheming  groups  who  loaf  about  the  thievish 
corners  of  the  streets,  blighted  by  depravity  and  gin;  the 
wretches  who  haunt  the  parks  to  levy  blackmail  by  trump- 
ing up  lying  charges  against  the  innocent;  the  brutal 
bullies  who  assault  helpless  girls  and  snatch  purses  from 
helpless  women, —  these  are  the  obscene  birds  of  prey  to 
whom  every  true  society  should  mete  out  a  pitiless  justice; 
and  the  sturdy  vagabonds,  the  begging  letter-writers,  and 
the  rogues  who  go  about  begging,  with  sham  deformities  and 
borrowed  children,  are  hardly  less  noxious  and  depraved. 
When  you  give  to  these,  you  are  not  giving  indiscriminate 
charity,  but  doing  indiscriminate  mischief.  To  consider 
the  poor  is  a  high  and  blessed  thing:  to  fling  chance  doles, 


gg  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

which  you  do  not  miss,  to  the  drunken  and  the  worthless, 
is  a  mere  baseness  and  folly.  Funds  administered  at  hap- 
hazard may  only  do  the  same  harm  on  a  larger  scale.  The 
East  End  of  London,  according  to  some  who  know  it  best, 
has  been  irretrievably  demoralized  by  the  careless  scatter- 
ing of  ill-considered  doles.  It  is  only  when  we  give  wisely 
and  generously  that  God  will  approve  our  gifts;  and  the 
wise  giving  of  money  becomes  a  most  stringent  duty  in 
exact  proportion  as  we  take  no  personal  part  in  those  forms 
of  kindness  which  are  more  blest. 

Again,  distress  is  not  to  be  remedied  by  hasty 
interferences  with  well-understood  economic  laws, —  inter- 
ferences, perhaps,  rashly  conceded  on  the  one  side  because 
they  are  menacingly  demanded  on  the  other.  By  all  means, 
let  everything  be  done  which  the  legislature  can  do;  but 
it  ought  not  to  do  what  only  tends  to  pauperize  the  work- 
ing classes  on  the  one  hand,  while,  on  the  other,  it  lays 
heavier  burdens  on  others  whose  sufferings  are  more  silent, 
but  not  less  real.  I  am,  for  instance,  wholly  opposed  to 
what  is  called  free  education.  The  pence  paid  by  the  poor 
are  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  one  hundred  easily  paid.  Is 
it  much  that  a  man  who  has  incurred  the  responsibility  of  a 
family  should  pay  for  the  week's  education  of  his  own  child 
as  much  as  the  cost  of  one  pint  of  ale?  Is  it  just  that  two 
millions  should  be  added  to  the  crushing  burden  of  our 
taxes,  to  save  men  from  paying  the  merest  fraction  of  what 
they  weekly  spend  on  tobacco  and  beer?  Where  the  in- 
ability is  real,  there  let  the  pence  be  freely  excused;  but, 
where  the  inability  merely  means  sloth  and  drink,  let  them 
be  required.  Nor,  again,  do  I  think  that  all  the  children 
should  be  fed  at  the  public  expense.  Let  this  be  done  for 
all  who  need  it,  as  it  is  done  in  many  of  our  parishes  by 


TRIALS  OF  THE  POOR.  8/ 

private  generosity;  but,  if  the  State  does  it,  it  will  only 
come  back  on  the  poor  in  rates  and  rent.  Nor  could  the 
State  do  a  deadlier  disservice  than  to  teach  parents  that 
they  are  not  responsible  for  the  support  of  the  children 
that  they  have  brought  into  the  world. 

Nor,  again,  do  I  think  that  works  not  otherwise  neces- 
sary ought  always  to  be  opened  directly  they  are  de- 
manded. It  cannot  be  done  wholesale  except  as  a  very 
temporary  remedy,  nor  without  increasing  the  influx  of 
crowds  into  cities  already  overcrowded,  nor  without  ulti- 
mately deepening  the  evils  it  is  meant  to  cure.  All  that  is 
necessary,  and  just,  and  wise,  and  kind  in  these  remedies 
—  in  free  education,  in  free  dinners,  in  supplying  work — • 
can  be  done,  ought  to  be  done,  and  is  being  done  in  detail 
in  each  parish  by  those  who  are  working,  not  speechifying. 
Each  parish  of  the  Church  of  England,  when  clergy  and 
laity  alike  do  their  duty,  is  an  agency  for  dealing  with 
distress,  whether  continuous  or  exceptional,  which  has  alike 
the  power  and  the  will  to  do  merciful,  discriminating,  per- 
manent, and  useful  work. 

Least  of  all  can  distress  be  remedied  by  wild  dreams 
of  revolution  or  communism,  the  destruction  of  capital,  the 
robbing  of  property,  the  disturbing  the  peace  of  cities,  or 
anything  of  the  kind.  These  things  merely  mean  pil- 
lage, anarchy,  bloodshed,  national  madness,  unfathomed 
misery,  irretrievable  ruin,  which  would  not  fall  mainly  on 
the  rich,  but  on  England  as  a  nation,  on  its  whole  great 
middle  classes,  and  most  of  all,  and  most  irretrievably, 
upon  the  poor.  To  set  class  against  class;  to  teach  the 
ignorant,  the  criminal,  and  the  lazy  to  turn  hungry  eyes  of 
hatred  on  property;  to  teach  them  the  falsehood  that  prop- 
erty is  plundered  from  them,  or  that  they  would  be  any- 


88  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

thing  but  infinitely  the  worse  by  the  vain  attempt  to  seize 
it, —  is  the  most  speedy  and  the  most  certain  way 'of  turn- 
ing partial  distress  into  universal  catastrophe,  and  present 
discomfort  into  final  ruin.  The  communists  talk  of  the 
"contemptuous"  charity  of  the  rich.  I  venture  to  say  that 
the  charity  of  those  rich  who  are  charitable  is  as  much  the 
reverse  of  contemptuous  as  it  possibly  can  be.  What  is 
needed  is  to  abolish,  not  to  exacerbate,  the  existence  of 
needless  and  unchristian  bitterness  between  those  who 
have  been  called  "the  masses"  and  "the  classes."  What 
we  desire  to  promote  is  the  feeling  that  the  interests  of  oft- 
contrasted  classes  are  not  antagonistic,  but  identical;  that 
the  rich  and  the  poor  are  alike  brethren  in  the  great  family 
of  God;  that  each  may  be  equally  happy  in  their  own  lot; 
that  they  cannot  do  without  each  other;  and  that  by  every 
law,  human  and  divine,  they  are  bound  to  work  with  and  to 
help  each  other. 

But  I  turn  from  the  negative  to  the  positive  side.  If 
nothing  but  evil  can  come  from  the  remedies  or  no  reme- 
dies on  which  I  have  touched,  —  from  neglectful  indiffer- 
ence, from  indiscriminate  almsgiving,  from  panic-stricken 
legislation,  from  socialistic  revolution, —  are  we  to  sit  still 
and  do  nothing?  God  forbid!  There  is  a  world  of  room 
for  Christian  effort;  there  is  ample  work  to  be  done  by 
every  human  being  who  has  a  brain  to  think,  a  heart  to 
pity,  an  arm  to  aid. 

So  far  as  the  Socialists  are  moved  by  a  deep  compassion 
for  human  misery;  so  far  as  their  action  may  serve  to 
startle  a  selfish  apathy;  so  far  as  they  succeed  in  opening 
the  eyes  of  the  nation  to  a  state  of  things  which  it  will 
tax  all  the  wisdom  of  the  wise  and  all  the  mercy  of  the 
kind  to  remedy,  so  far  they  may  well  have  the  sympathy 


TRIALS  OF  THE  POOR. 


89 


of  all,  even  when  we  are  compelled  to  consider  many 
of  their  words  inflammatory,  and  some  of  their  methods 
as  a  certain  cause  of  deeper  misery  and  worse  compli- 
cations. 

But  there  is  one  remedy  which  goes  to  the  very  heart 
of  the  matter;  and,  if  the  Socialist  leaders  wish  to  bene- 
fit not  to  madden,  to  uplift  and  not  basely  to  flatter, 
it  is  their  special  duty  to  make  their  genuine  adherents 
see  that,  if  distress  is  to  be  relieved  and  pauperism 
abolished,  the  most  prolific  and  permanent  causes  of 
distress  and  pauperism  must  be  removed.  He  is  a  better 
patriot  and  a  truer  philanthropist  who  cuts  off  the  causes 
than  he  who  potters  with  the  effects;  he  who  prevents  the 
disease  than  he  who  alleviates  the  symptoms.  Now,  it  is 
a  very  sad  fact,  which  we  must  face,  that,  besides  the  dis- 
tress which  is  innocent  and  undeserved,  and  which  needs 
all  our  sympathy  and  all  our  effort,  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
distress  which  is  absolutely  self-caused,  which  is  the  nec- 
essary consequence  of  .laziness  and  vice.  It  is  a  duty  to 
say  this.  If  it  be  a  duty  which  requires  courage  to  speak 
of  the  sins  and  vices  of  the  rich,  it  is  no  less  necessary, 
and  requires  more  courage,  in  days  when  the  working 
classes  are  practically  our  masters,  to  point  out,  not 
harshly,  not  unsympathetically,  yet  with  perfect  faithful- 
ness, the  sins  and  vices  of  the  poor.  Now,  among  the 
poor  there  are  three  wide-spread  and  prolific  causes  of 
distress, —  thriftlessness,  disgracefully  early  marriages, 
and,  above  all,  drink. 

First  there  is  thriftlessness.  The  poor  clergyman, 
the  poor  clerk,  the  poor  tradesman,  is,  as  a  rule,  thrifty. 
He  denies  himself;  he  lives  within  his  narrow  income; 
he  lays  by  some  of  his  scanty  earnings.  In  the  sum- 


gO  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

mer  he  does  not  forget  the  winter,  nor  in  sunshine  the 
rainy  days.  It  is  not  so  with  multitudes  of  the  poor. 
When  in  good  wages,  many  of  them  waste  what  would 
have  kept  up  their  self-respect  when  work  is  slack.  They 
have  not  realized  that  extravagance  and  luxury  are  quite 
as  possible  and  quite  as  culpable  in  the  poor  as  in  the 
rich. 

A  second  cause  of  distress  is  the  prevalence  of  dis- 
gracefully early  marriages.  In  the  upper  and  middle 
classes  it  is  the  exception,  and  is  regarded  as  discreditable, 
if  a  young  man  thinks  of  marrying  much  before  the  age  of 
twenty-nine  or  thirty,  or  unless  he  has  sufficient  means 
to  keep  a  wife  and  family.  But,  unhappily,  in  the  poor- 
est classes  marriages  between  mere  boys  and  girls  of  eigh- 
teen are  disgracefully  prevalent,  and  they  marry  often 
when  they  have  no  more  in  hand  than  to  pay  a  month's 
rent  for  some  filthy  and  squalid  room.  Hence,  as  statistics 
painfully  prove,  the  rate  of  increase  of  the  population  is 
very  much  more  rapid  in  squalid  centres  than  in  the 
wealthier  suburbs;  and  the  result  is  an  offspring  stunted, 
rickety,  diseased,  unhappy  children  of  the  gutter  and  the 
slum,  who,  on  the  border  lands  of  destitution,  are,  in  the 
terrible  language  of  South,  not  so  much  born  into  the 
world  as  damned  into  the  world. 

Beyond  all  question,  and  beyond  all  remedy,  pauperism 
will  be  multiplied  and  misery  deepened  till  the  poor  learn, 
as  well  as  the  rich,  that  marriage  is  not  to  be  enterprised 
nor  taken  in  hand  unadvisedly,  lightly,  wantonly,  but 
discreetly,  advisedly,  reverently,  soberly,  and  in  the  fear 
of  God. 

But    the   third  and  master  curse,  the  Aaron's  rod 
among  the  serpent  curses  of  distress,  is  drink.     A  phi  Ian- 


TRIALS   OF  THE  POOR.  gi 

thropist  bore  witness  that  last  year  he  relieved  2,900  cases 
of  distress,  and  had  ascertained  that  of  those  2,850  were 
directly  due  to  drink.  A  statistician,  minimizing  rather 
than  exaggerating,  found  that  the  working  classes  spend 
annually  ^36,000,000  in  drink;  and  of  this  very  many 
millions  are  not  merely  spent  in  drink,  but  wasted  in  drink. 
A  sum  Sufficient  to  redeem  the  whole  kingdom  from  pau- 
perism is  squanderer  in  excess.  I  do  not  wonder  at  it  so 
long  as  we  are,  by  law,  sowing  our  streets  broadcast  with 
gins  and  traps  of  glaring  temptation,  and  while  legislators 
listen  with  cynical  indifference  to  the  long-continued  ap- 
peals of  those  who  know  that  this  is  the  one  master  fiend 
of  national  degradation.  While  we  leave  this  curse  un- 
checked, let  us  leave  the  beasts  of  prey  upon  our  shield, 
but  tear  the  lilies  out.  Nor  can  any  one  effectually  help 
the  working  classes  till  in  these  respects  they  make  a 
strenuous  effort  to  help  themselves.  Where  there  is  sloth, 
incontinence,  bad  work,  recklessness,  there  is  no  power 
on  earth  which  can  prevent  distress.  The  working  classes 
loudly  complain  that  our  ships  are  being  filled  with  foreign 
sailors  and  our  trades  crowded  with  foreign  competitors; 
and  so  it  will  be  if  foreign  sailors  are  the  less  drunken  and 
the  more  trustworthy,  and  if  foreign  workmen  be  the  more 
industrious  and  the  less  incompetent.  That  which  con- 
trols, for  men's  good,  the  laws  of  life,  is  not  the  shout  of 
the  noisiest,  the  wish  of  the  idlest,  the  decree  of  the 
vilest,  but  the  hand  of  the  diligent  and  the  knowledge  of 
the  wise.  The  man  who  helps  to  put  down  the  curse  of 
drink  will  not  earn  millions  by  it,  nor  will  he  be  made  a 
peer  for  it.  He  will  be  furiously  attacked  by  the  selfishness 
of  monopolists,  and  by  all  who  have  a  vested  interest  in 
the  causes  of  human  ruin;  but  he  will  have  done  more  good 


g2  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

by  diminishing  misery  than  by  building  cathedrals,  by  pre- 
venting sickness  than  by  endowing  hospitals,  by  promoting 
virtue  than  by  rearing  prisons. 

It  is,  then,  of  supreme  importance  to  encourage  thrift, 
to  discourage  reckless  marriage,  to  put  down  the  curse  of 
drink.  Further,  we  can  help  all  wise  institutions.  Thank 
God,  there  are  many  of  them.  Every  effort  to  make  men 
good,  steady,  diligent  workmen;  every  effort  to  raise  the 
swarming  myriads  of  our  youth  into  health  and  purity,  into 
self-reliance  and  self-respect;  every  effort  to  cleanse  our 
nightly  thoroughfares  from  their  shameless  impurity;  every 
help  given  to  well-conducted  hospitals;  every  help  cheer- 
fully and  self-denyingly  extended  to  all  who  are  thor- 
oughly willing  to  help  themselves,  is  a  remedy  in  the 
power  of  each  of  us;  and  it  is  a  remedy  which  blesses 
and  is  blest. 

Every  one  of  us  belongs  to  some  parish ;  and  I  am  more 
and  more  convinced  that  each  faithful  parish,  if  properly 
assisted,  can  best  cope  with  the  distress  in  its  own  limits. 
Every  well-worked  parish  abounds  in  though'tfully  planned 
agencies  to  raise  and  comfort  the  suffering  poor.  The  clergy 
often  provide  that  in  some,  at  least,  of  their  densely  crowded 
streets,  not  one  person  shall  suffer  cruel  and  intolerable 
hardships  unless  those  hardships  be  self-induced  by  drink 
and  crime.  The  deserving  poor  are  helped  with  clothes, 
with  coal,  with  work,  and  that  with  no  grudging  hand, 
wherever  the  innocent  are  suffering  need.  If  each  of  us 
will  do  our  individual  duty  in  the  parish  wherein  our  lot  is 
cast,  we  shall  be  doing  in  the  aggregate  an  immeasurable 
amount  of  good. 

There,  then,  are  three  ways  in  which  you  all  can  help, 
—  by  fighting  against  the  causes  of  distress,  by  assisting 


TRIALS  OF  THE  POOR. 


93 


every  good  and  careful  institution  of  relief,   by  generously 
and  strenuously  doing  your  individual  duty. 

It  is  ridiculous,  and  it  is  faithless,  to  take  pessimistic 
views  and  to  despair  of  the  whole  state  of  society.  If  only 
every  man  and  woman  among  us  recognized  the  plain  truth 
that  we  are  the  Church;  that  all  these  duties  are  not  the 
duties  of  the  clergy,  but  our  duties;  that  we  can  no  longer 
shift  on  to  other  shoulders  the  sacred  responsibilities  which 
God,  and  no  other,  lays  upon  ourselves;  —  if,  in  other 
words,  Christians  could  only  be  aroused  to  be  Christians, 
to  feel  as  Christians,  to  live  as  Christians,  to  labor  as 
Christians,  we  should  soon  sweep  away  the  subterranean 
horrors  of 

"  This  deep,  dark  underworld  of  woe 
That  underlies  life's  shining  surfaces, — 
Dim,  populous  pain  and  multitudinous  toil, 
Unheeded  of  the  heedless." 

There  is  wealth  enough  to  relieve,  ten  times  over,  all 
real  distress,  and  not  feel  it.  Oh,  terribly  heavy  in  these 
days  are  the  responsibilities  of  the  wealthy!  Some  few 
of  them  are  liberal.  Many  of  them  are  the  reverse  of  lib- 
eral; and  to  all  such  St.  James  says:  "Go  to,  now,  ye  rich 
men,  weep  and  howl  for  the  miseries  that  shall  come  upon 
you.  Your  riches  are  rotted,  and  your  garments  moth- 
eaten."  Such  was  the  apostle's  terrible  denunciation  of 
selfish  ease  and  arrogant  rapacity.  It  is  valid  forever 
against  the  tarnish  and  corruption  of  riches  greedily 
amassed,  ungenerously  withheld.  Wealth  may  be  honora- 
ble, and  may  be  used  blessedly  when  men  regard  them- 
selves as  being,  what  indeed  they  are,  the  stewards  of  it, 
not  the  owners;  when  they  know  how  to  acquire  without 
avarice,  and  to  communicate  without  grudging.  But  the 


94  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

wealth  of  the  callous,  the  selfish,  the  greedy,  the  luxurious, 
the  selfish, —  their  gold  and  silver  is  rusted,  and  its  rust 
shall  be  a  witness  against  them,  and  shall  eat  their  flesh 
as  it  were  fire!  God  has  said,  the  voice  of  the  Saviour 
Himself,  has  said  to  you,  "Whosoever  hath  this  world's 
good,  and  seeth  his  brother  have  need,  and  shutteth  up  his 
bowels  of  compassion  from  him, —  how  dwelleth  the  love 
of  God  in  him?" 


DUTY  OF  GIVING. 

"And  they  came,  every  one  whose  heart  stirred  him  up,  and  every  one  whom 
his  spirit  made  willing,  and  brought  the  Lord's  offering." — Ex.  xxxv.  21. 

THE  duty  of  almsgiving,  of  self-sacrificing  generosity, 
of  systematic  and  proportional  charity,  of  the  responsi- 
bility for  and  the  right  stewardship  of  what  God  has 
given  us.  It  is  a  subject  of  grave  importance,  of  seri- 
ous difficulty,  of  great  distastefulness  to  most  people.  For 
that  very  reason  it  is  one  which  we  ought  to  face,  and 
to  face  seriously  as  in  the  sight  of  God,  since  it  is  un- 
doubtedly one  of  the  duties,  and  one  of  the  too  much 
neglected  duties,  of  life.  I  am  speaking  to  the  poor  as 
well  as  to  the  rich,  and  I  beg  my  poorer  readers  to  bear  in 
mind  that  the  spirit  and  principle  of  every  word  that  I  say 
apply  quite  as  strongly  to  them  as  to  their  wealthier 
brethren.  In  point  of  fact,  the  highest  eulogy  which  our 
blessed  Lord  pronounced  on  any  act  of  charity  was  given 
to  that  poor  widow  who  did  but  cast  in  two  mites,  which 
make  one  farthing.  It  was,  He  said,  a  greater  gift  than 
that  of  the  rich  donors ;  for  it  was  all  that  she  had.  Her 
gift  left  her  no  margin:  their  gifts  still  leave  them  a 
boundless  superfluity.  To  all,  then,  rich  and  poor  alike, 


96  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  rule  is  "to  do  good,  and  to  communicate,  forget  not  " ;  to 
all  the  exhortation,  "Be  merciful  after  thy  power:  if  thou 
hast  much,  give  plenteously;  if  thou  hast  little,  give  gladly 
of  that  little";  to  all  the  assurance,  "He  that  giveth  to 
the  poor  lendeth  unto  the  Lord,  and,  look,  that  which  he 
layeth  out  He  will  pay  him  again  " ;  to  all  the  promise,  "  He 
that  soweth  plentifully  shall  reap  plentifully  " ;  to  all  the 
warning,  "There  is  that  withholdeth  more  than  is  meet, 
but  it  tendeth  only  to  poverty."  We  profess  to  reverence 
the  Bible  as  our  rule  of  life,  but  the  Bible  is  full  from  end 
to  end  of  the  duty  of  giving  back  to  God  of  that  which  is 
His,  though  for  a  brief  space  He  has  lent  it  to  us.  We 
profess  to  take  Christ  as  our  example;  but  Christ  not  only 
insisted  again  and  again  on  this  duty,  but  it  lay  at  the  very 
centre  of  His  whole  earthly  sacrifice.  The  poor  man 
Christ  Jesus  gave  warning  after  warning  to  the  rich,  and 
condemns  the  selfishness  of  poverty  as  distinctly  as  the 
luxury  of  wealth. 

That  there  is  a  special  need  just  now  for  every  true 
Christian,  and  indeed  for  every  patriotic  citizen,  to  con- 
sider this  subject,  is  apparent  from  the  attention  which  it 
excites.  When  it  has  become  a  common  topic  in  maga- 
zines, it  may  well  demand  the  consideration  of  the  pulpit; 
and,  when  the  duty  of  less  greed  and  larger  generosity  is 
insisted  on  by  agnostics  and  infidels,  it  is  surely  time  for 
it  to  be  considered  by  Christians. 

May  I,  then,  ask  every  one  of  us  to  take  seriously  to 
heart  the  duty  of  facing  this  question  for  himself, —  of 
asking  himself,  not  perfunctorily  or  self-deceivingly,  but 
with  simplicity  and  sincerity,  Am  I,  on  any  reasonable  es- 
timate,—  am  I,  even  with  every  allowance  for  family  cares 
and  duties,  really  free  from  that  love  of  money  which  is  a 


DUTY  OF  GIVING. 


97 


root  of  all  kinds  of  evil?  Am  I  too  selfishly  squandering 
on  personal  comforts,  or  am  I  too  eagerly  hoarding  for 
family  ends?  Am  I  in  God's  sight,  who  sees  truly,  among 
the  mean,  the  greedy,  the  niggardly,  like  churlish  Nabal, 
who  refused  to  recognize  even  just  claims;  like  luxurious 
Dives,  too  self-absorbed  even  to  notice  the  misery  which 
lay  unpitied  at  his  gate?  Or  am  I,  by  God's  grace,  of  the 
nobler  few  who  are  not  unconscious  of  the  neighborhood  of 
misery,  not  swathed  and  surfeited  in  gross  indulgence  of 
self?  Am  I  one  of  the  liberal  souls  who  devise  liberal 
things,  one  of  those  who  shall  experience  the  beatitude  of 
him  that  considereth  the  poor,  of  those  who  have  a  bountiful 
eye,  of  those  who  remember  the  words  of  the  Lord  Jesus, 
—"It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive"?  When 
we  look  at  the  conditions  of  society, —  at  cheating  conven- 
tionalities of  profession;  at  wealth  gotten  by  fraud ;  at  some 
into  whose  bursting  coffers  runs  the  gold  which  is  wet  with 
the  tears  of  women  and  red  with  the  blood  of  men;  at  gains 
swollen  by  tempting  the  perverted  passions  and  diseased 
appetite  of  mankind;  at  gains  swollen  by  pandering  to  the 
spurious  excitement  of  betting  and  gambling;  at  low  gin- 
shops  where  the  poor  woman  spends  the  last  penny  on  that 
which  shall  poison  the  blood  of  her  children,  who  die  like 
flies;  at  false  weights,  at  scamped  work,  at  forged  trade- 
marks, at  adulterated  goods,  at  scant  hires,  at  starvation 
wages,  at  sweaters'  dens, —  we  have  nothing  to  say  to  crimi- 
nals who  live  by  such  pandering  to  the  worst  instincts  of 
their  own  nature,  whether  they  be  gorgeous  criminals  who 
loll  in  carnages  or  squalid  criminals  who  booze  in  beer- 
shops,  except  that,  by  God's  eternal  law,  wealth  gotten 
by  wickedness  shall  perish.  But,  if  these  be  the  crimes 
of  the  comparatively  few,  are  not  vast  multitudes  of  us 


98  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

guilty  of  possessing  means  stricken  with  sterility  and  stag- 
nation, of  earnings  needless,  disproportionate,  untithed, 
unutilized  for  good,  laid  up  in  secret,  prolific  of  deteri- 
oration to  ourselves,  barren  of  all  blessing  to  others, — 
earnings  which  contribute  nothing,  or  nothing  adequate, 
nothing  in  God's  estimate,  to  the  honor  of  God  and  to 
the  service  of  mankind? 

My  friends,  the  special  gravity  of  such  questions  at 
the  present  moment  lies  in  the  consideration  (let  me  ask 
your  solemn  attention  to  it,  as  patriots,  as  citizens,  as 
Christians,  even  as  men)  of  England's  poverty  and  of 
England's  wealth. 

Of  England's  poverty  I  shall  say  but  very  little  now. 
Suffice  it  that  the  paupers  in  receipt  of  parish  relief  repre- 
sent but  a  fraction  of  our  national  poverty,  and  neither  the 
sorest  nor  the  most  pitiable  part  of  it;  yet,  in  the  first 
week  of  January,  1891,  there  were  761,312  paupers,  va- 
grants, and  pauper  lunatics  in  England.  Suffice  it  that  the 
committee  of  the  London  School  Board  report  110,759  chil- 
dren whose  fees  are  remitted  because  of  poverty,  and  63,888 
children  habitually  attending  school  in  want  of  food.  Suf- 
fice it  that  poverty  —  honest  poverty,  or  poverty  dirty, 
drunken  and  vicious  —  lies  at  our  doors,  confronts  us  every 
day  in  our  daily  walks.  We  see  daily  the  ragged,  squalid, 
blighted,  emaciated  groups  of  its  drink-ruined  victims.  The 
social  wreckage  is  always  and  everywhere  before  our  eyes, 
in  all  its  sin  and  agony  and  shame.  Blind  must  be  the 
eyes  and  callous  the  hearts  which  do  not  see  and  will  not 
grieve  for  it. 

But  what  shall  I  say  of  England's  wealth?  What  I 
say  shall  be  based  on  the  calculations,  and  sometimes  stated 
in  the  very  words,  of  men  who  have  spoken  on  the  subject 


DUTY  OF  GIVING. 


99 


with  authority.  In  1886,  according  to  Mr.  Giffen,  the  total 
yearly  income  of  the  United  Kingdom  had  reached  the 
enormous  amount  of  ^1,207,000,000  sterling.  The  amount 
assessed  for  income  tax  has  much  more  than  doubled  in 
thirty  years.  In  forty-nine  years  it  has  been  nearly 
trebled.  Will  you  try  to  take  in  these  facts,  stated  by 
Mr.  Gladstone?  In  1862  the  income  of  the  nation  not 
derivable  from  land  was  ^99,000,000.  In  1889  it  was 
^336,000,000,  showing  an  increment  of  ^154,000,000,  or 
85  per  cent.  It  is  estimated  that  at  the  present  time  the 
entire  capital  of  the  country  amounts  to  the  altogether  stu- 
pendous and  appalling  sum  of  ;£  12, 000,000,000,  and  this 
increase  by  leaps  and  bounds  is  mainly  in  "irresponsible 
wealth,"  as  it  has  been  called,  "little  watched  and  checked 
by  opinion,  little  brought  into  immediate  contact  with 
duty."  Irresponsible  wealth!  My  friends,  do  not  be  de- 
ceived: there  is  no  such  thing.  The  owner  of  wealth  is 
responsible  absolutely  and  always.  He  may  bury  his 
talent  in  the  earth,  or  in  the  consols,  but  he  will  have  to 
give  an  account  to  the  uttermost  farthing.  How  shall  we 
give  an  account  of  this  awful  stewardship?  The  very  word 
"  steward  "  is  absolutely  meaningless,  if  it  does  not  mean  that 
we  have  to  render  an  account.  To  whom?  Ask  yourselves 
whether  the  thought  that  we  are  accountable  to  God,  who 
cannot  be  deceived,  with  whom  excuses  become  speechless, 
to  whom  no  shams  can  be  palmed  off,  ought  not,  if  indeed 
we  have  grace  to  be  faithful,  to  be  "a  prevalent  motive  of 
almost  incalculable  power,  entering  into  the  secrets  and 
recesses  of  our  lives." 

What  ought  we  to  give?  You  know  that  Jacob,  in  his 
vow  to  God,  said,  "  Of  all  that  Thou  givest  me,  I  will  surely 
give  back  the  tenth  unto  Thee."  That  was  the  rule  of 


IOO  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Moses  in  the  Jewish  legislation.  It  is  still  kept  by  all 
faithful  Jews,  and  kept  so  strictly  that  they  do  not  regard 
this  tenth  as  belonging  to  themselves  at  all.  Their  chari- 
ties begin  where  the  tenth  ends.  Now,  the  gospel  lays 
down  no  hard-and-fast  rule.  It  only  bids  each  man  give  "as 
God  hath  prospered  him,"  "according  as  he  is  disposed  in 
his  heart,"  cheerfully,  with  a  willing  mind.  But  is  Chris- 
tianity meant  to  make  us  more  free  at  the  cost  of  making 
us  more  selfish?  If  the  lower  law  has  been  annulled,  it  has 
been  so  only  by  "a  more  searching,  constraining,  peremptory 
law,  a  law  which  has  its  roots  in  nature,  a  law  older  than 
the  Decalogue,"  the  law  of  Christian  charity  and  Christian 
generosity.  And  yet  do  we  give  as  much  as  the  ancient 
Jews?  or  is  most  of  the  wealth  of  England  coagulated  in 
the  slimy  and  stagnant  pools  of  selfishness,  from  which  no 
rill  dribbles  to  fertilize  the  barren  and  miserable  plains? 
Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  as  a  nation  —  which  means 
that  in  countless  individual  cases — we  do  not  give  ade- 
quately, and  that  the  rich,  and  the  very  rich  who  would 
feel  it  least,  give,  as  a  rule,  least  adequately.  "The  clutch 
and  gripe  of  most  possessors  over  their  money,"  says  Mr. 
Gladstone,  "is  scarcely  ever  relaxed.  And  this  gross 
defect  of  duty  which  prevails  is  not  due  to  the  odious  vice 
of  conscious  and  hardened  avarice,  but  to  ignorance,  care- 
lessness, and  the  love  of  indulgence.  It  is  due  to  the 
existence  in  all  classes,  but  perhaps  most  in  the  wealthiest, 
of  those  —  of  all  men  the  most  miserable  — who,  however 
imperative  their  obligations,  however  vast  their  wealth, 
have  comprehended  from  youth  upwards  no  idea  but  that  of 
enjoyment,  and  all  whose  incomes  are  swallowed  up  with- 
out compunction  in  the  insatiable  maw  of  their  desires." 
Why,  if  English  Christians  dreamed  of  giving  anything 


DUTY  OF  GIVING.  IOI 

like  a  tenth  part  of  their  incomes  to  the  service  of  God  and 
their  neighbour,  how  much,  do  you  think,  would  annually  go 
to  purposes  of  charity?  No  less  than  ^130,000,000  a  year,  • 
and  would  still  leave  ^70,000,000  at  the  close  of  the  year 
in  the  prospering  stores  of  the  wealth-making  classes. 
The  sad  fact  is  that  the  wealth  of  this  richest  country  in 
the  world  "has  increased  with  a  profuseness  and  rapidity 
unequalled  in  history;  and,  as  it  has  increased,  the  propor- 
tion given  to  the  service  of  God  and  our  neighbour  has 
become  less  and  less.  We  are  dazzled  by  ;£i,ooo  given 
to  a  hospital  or  a  cathedral.  We  forget  that  the  vast,  glori- 
ous cathedrals  themselves,  which  so  incomparably  surpass 
the  powers  of  any  attempted  munificence  of  ours  worthily 
to  maintain,  were  built  by  a  population  not  one-fifteenth  so 
numerous  and  not  one-hundredth  part  so  wealthy  as  ours." 
We  forget  that  the  wealthy  men  who  give  worthily  of  their 
dangerous  accumulations,  are  not  one  in  a  hundred.  We 
forget  that  the  vaunted  charities  of  England,  when  esti- 
mated by  the  certain  wealth  of  England,  are  not  the  glory 
of  our  national  generosity,  but  the  most  damning  proof  of 
the  national  meanness  and  national  indifference.  Why, 
if  we  had  the  courage  to  break  the  accursed  tyranny  of 
drink,  and  if  men  gave  but  a  tithe  of  the  millions  which 
are  but  the  annual  increase  of  our  wealth,  England  might 
bloom  once  more  like  a  garden;  the  horrors  of  slum  life, 
the  festering  misery  of  East,  and  North,  and  South  Lon- 
don, the  starvation  of  many  of  the  clergy,  the  debt  on  our 
struggling  hospitals,  the  destitution  and  squalor  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  miserable  men  and  women  and  chil- 
dren—  all  of  which  we  ought  to  mourn  as  the  cruel  misery 
of  such  vast  multitudes  for  whom  Christ  died  —  would  live 
but 


I02  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"  In  the  memory  of  Time, 
Which,  like  a  penitent  libertine,  should  start, 
Look  back  and  shudder  at  his  former  years." 

Is  it  not  time,  then,  that  our  moral  sense  should  be 
aroused,  that  we  should  think  about  "opening  a  private 
bank  account  with  our  own  consciences  "  ?  For  let  us  not 
be  deceived.  All  the  wisest  and  most  serious  voices  are 
telling  us  that  the  present  condition  of  things,  the  present 
startling  and  glaring  contrast  of  colossal  wealth  and  osten- 
tatious luxury  amid  masses  of  human  beings  who  live  all 
their  lives  on  the  grim  borderland  of  starvation,  constitutes 
a  grave  danger  both  to  individuals  and  to  the  State.  In  the 
wicked,  luxurious  empires  of  ancient  history  the  co-exist- 
ence of  utmost  luxury  and  urgent  need  was  not  uncommon; 
and  amid  gold  and  perfumes  and  precious  stones  there  were 
counted  also,  in  the  destroying  apparatus  of  luxury,  the 
slaves  and  souls  of  men.  But  never  did  this  occur  without 
peril,  never  but  as  a  menace  of  the  sky.  An  English  pre- 
late, the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  says  to  us,  "The  zones  of 
enormous  wealth  and  degrading  poverty,  unless  carefully 
considered,  will  presently  generate  a  tornado,  which,  when 
the  storm  clears,  may  leave  a  good  deal  of  wreckage  be- 
hind." An  English  cardinal,  Cardinal  Manning,  says  to 
us:  "The  present  condition  of  our  laboring  people  is  one  of 
wide-spread  unrest.  The  world  of  capital  is  combining  in 
alarm  against  the  world  of  labor."  An  American  cardinal, 
Cardinal  Gibbons,  warns  of  a  struggle,  how  imminent  none 
can  tell,  "the  signs  of  which  fill  us  with  disquiet,  because 
the  thirst  for  wealth  becomes  daily  more  insatiable,  and 
the  cries  of  the  distressed  more  poignant  and  violent."  An 
English  Positivist,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  writes  that  "a 
society  in  which  generation  after  generation  passes  away, 


DUTY  OF  GIVING. 


103 


consolidating  vast  and  ever  increasing  hoards  of  wealth, 
a  society  in  which  capital  has  created  for  itself  a  gos- 
pel of  its  own,  and  claimed,  for  the  good  of  society,  the 
divine  right  of  selfishness,  such  a  society  the  workmen 
will  not  forever  tolerate."  A  French  sceptic,  M.  Renan, 
testifies  that,  "when  modern  individualism  has  borne  its 
last  fruits,  when  a  dwarfed,  paltry,  shop-keeping  society  shall 
have  been  driven  out  with  scourges,  by  the  heroic  and  ideal- 
istic portions  of  humanity,  then  life  in  common  will  be 
valued  again."  "There  is,"  says  an  American  poet,  Mr. 
Lowell,  "there  is  a  poison  in  the  sores  of  Lazarus  against 
which  Dives  has  no  antidote."  "Lazarus,"  says  a  Wes- 
leyan  minister,  Mr.  Hughes,  "is  no  longer  lying  on  the 
doorsteps  of  Dives,  in  the  quiescence  of  sullen  despair,  but 
vehemently  gesticulating  to  hungry  men  at  the  corners  of 
the  street."  "The  working  classes,"  says  Bishop  Barry, 
"are  now  demanding  that  Christianity  should  be  tried  by 
the  test  of  its  social  effectiveness,  its  power  to  serve  the 
welfare,  physical,  intellectual,  moral,  of  the  great  mass  of 
men."  "The  generation  which  is  about  to  take  our  place," 
says  the  Bishop  of  Derry,  "will  certainly  judge  the  Church 
by  her  works.  I  see  them  rising  to  their  feet,  the  great- 
est host  that  time  has  ever  known,  and  hear  the  murmur 
of  millions  speaking  to  millions  across  the  sea  in  many 
languages.  What  there  is  in  the  gospel  to  rectify  the 
relations  of  human  life,  to  elevate  the  selfishness  of  capital 
and  chasten  the  selfishness  of  labour,  to  carry  to  the  homes 
of  the  poor  improvement  in  the  present  and  hope  in  the 
future,  that  will  find  eager  listeners.  But  to  the  men  of 
the  near  future  religion  will  appear  a  barren  and  worthless 
stem  unless  it  be  taught  to  clothe  itself  with  the  blossoms 
of  worship  and  bear  the  fruits  of  human  love." 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Can  you  neglect  the  weighty  admonitions  of  so  many 
voices?  And  do  they  not  all  point  to  one  and  the  same 
lesson?  I  will  explain  it  in  the  words  of  »two  great  prime 
ministers  of  England.  Said  Lord  Beaconsfield  as  far  back 
as  1832,  "I  will  withhold  my  support  from  every  ministry 
which  will  not  originate  some  great  measure  to  ameliorate 
the  condition  of  the  lower  orders."  Said  Mr.  Gladstone 
last  year,  "We  ought,  in  this  life,  to  foster  all  that  makes 
goodness  easier,  and  sets  barriers  of  whatever  kind  across 
the  flowery  ways  of  sin." 

My  friends,  I  have  touched  on  the  public  danger  of 
wealth  that  falsely  regards  itself  as  irresponsible :  I  have 
left  the  private  peril  to  our  own  characters  almost  un- 
touched. Yet  the  accumulation  of  stagnant  wealth  breeds 
in  the  wealthy  "a  supercilious  cynicism,  an  impenetrable 
obduracy,  which  cannot  understand  the  miseries  of  the 
people."  That  there  is  a  danger  to  our  own  personal 
character  and  well-being  from  the  love  of  money,  from 
being  too  eager  to  get  it,  and  too  close  in  grasping  it 
when  gotten,  all  Scripture  warns  us,  and  all  experience 
shows,  and  Christ,  our  Lord  and  Master,  emphatically 
teaches.  A  selfish  life,  an  egotistical  life,  is,  whether 
in  millionaire  or  in  pauper,  a  life  conspicuously  con- 
temptible; and  "a  heart  at  leisure  from  itself,"  a  hand 
generous  in  blessings,  is  the  heart  and  hand  of  a  Christian 
whom  God  loves. 

I  will  not  dwell  further  on  the  subject.  But  I  have 
touched  upon  it  now,  because  at  this  season  of  the  year 
appeals  are  made  to  you  for  some  of  the  most  needful  and 
Christ-like  of  the  Church's  efforts.  The  mean  and  the 
selfish  will  hate  those  appeals:  the  noble  and  the  gener- 
ous will  hail  and  welcome  them.  Oh  that  the  considera- 


DUTY  OF  GIVING. 


105 


tions  which  I  have  urged  upon  you  might  tell  in  the 
habitual  generosity  of  our  gifts  to  the  cause  of  Christ,  to 
schools,  to  hospitals,  to  missions,  to  temperance,  to  all 
the  great  work  of  social  amelioration,  to  the  indispensable 
maintenance  of  your  Church  and  its  worship,  to  the  imme- 
diate care  of  the  poor  who  are  at  your  doors.  In  the  weekly 
offertory  we  have  what  we  should  all  regard  as  a  happy 
reminder  of  our  obligations,  as  a  precious  opportunity  for 
the  fulfilment  of  duties  which  otherwise  too  many  of  us 
would  callously  and  habitually  ignore.  It  is  ancient,  it  is 
Scriptural,  it  is  free.  Man  does  not  know,  man  will  not 
inquire,  whether  our  gifts  have  been  mean  or  ample,  ade- 
quate or  wholly  disproportionate;  but  God  knows,  and  God 
will  reward,  and  God  will  judge.  Public  spirit,  magna- 
nimity towards  man  and  in  God's  service,  is  in  itself  a  form 
of  charity  as  noble  as  it  is  rare.  Even  of  the  poor  wan- 
derers of  the  desert,  Aaron  said,  "The  people  bring  much 
more  than  enough  for  the  service  of  the  work."  "Much 
more  than  enough!"  O  happy  Aaron!  O  vanished  days! 
"  Much  more  than  enough,"-  — what  a  glorious  river  of  muni- 
ficence, compared  with  our  agonizing  dribblets!  much  more 
than  enough  given  by  exiled  wanderers  in  the  barren  wil- 
derness, while  here,  in  a  city  of  which  the  annual  income 
is  counted  by  so  many  millions,  nearly  every  charity  is 
struggling,  and  people  perish  for  lack  of  bread!  It  is  sad, 
it  is  humiliating,  to  think  how  much  more  fascinating  to 
most  of  us  is  the  love  of  gold  than  the  love  of  God!  how 
very  few  of  us  are  capable  of  the  effort  of  honouring  our- 
selves by  honouring  God,  how  few  of  us  will  trust  Him 
with  a  loan,  as  though  He  were  a  creditor  who,  we  fear,  will 
not  repay!  how  few  of  us  really  believe  in  the  promises 
which  He  has  pronounced  upon  those  sacrifices  of  the  cheer- 


IO6  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

ful  giver  with  which  He  is  well  pleased!  Read  in  the 
thirty-fifth  chapter  of  Exodus  how  the  desert  Israelites 
poured  forth  their  gifts  for  the  tabernacle;  how  the  women 
took  off  and  gave  their  brooches  and  earrings  and  armlets ; 
how  every  man  that  offered  offered  gold,  a  free-will  offering 
unto  the  Lord.  Will  ye  see  that  ye  abound  in  this  grace 
also?  will  you,  like  them,  thank  God  that  you  have  (as  indeed 
you  have)  the  means,  and,  what  is  better  than  the  means,  the 
will  to  offer  willingly?  Test  your  own  superiority  to  lower 
considerations,  show  that  you  can  endure  the  —  to  some  of 
you  agonizing  —  martyrdom  of  an  infinitesimal  self-denial. 
About  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  the  French  Protestant 
preacher,  Saurin,  preached  a  sermon  on  charity,  in  which  he 
mentioned,  as  I  have  done,  the  example  of  the  Jews,  and  the 
beatitudes  of  wealth  enriched  by  liberality,  and  at  the  end 
of  his  sermon  men  placed  all  the  money  they  had  in  the  col- 
lection plate,  women  heaped  upon  it  their  jewels  and  their 
gold.  Do  you  think  that  they  missed  what  they  gave?  Were 
they  the  losers  for  being  for  once  carried  out  of  themselves  — 
out  of  their  meaner,  narrower,  more  worldly  selves  —  by  a 
wave  of  sacrifice?  May  we  not  feel  sure  that  they  looked 
back  on  that  impulse  of  generosity  as  having  caused  them 
greater  happiness  in  the  gold  they  gave  than  in  all  the 
gold  they  kept?  I,  alas!  am  no  Saurin;  but  is  there  any 
reason  why  you  should  not  be  as  generous  as  the  French 
eighteenth  century  audience  which  Saurin  addressed?  Life 
is  fleeting;  opportunity  is  short;  the  needs  are  great;  the 
Master  presses.  Then,  while  you  have  life,  and  health, 
and  means,  give  to  God  that  which  is  His.  Give  for  the 
sake  of  the  poor,  that  they  may  live;  for  the  sake  of  so- 
ciety, that  it  may  endure;  for  your  own  sake,  that  the  work 
of  your  hands  may  be  blessed;  for  the  dignity,  and  beauty, 


DUTY  OF  GIVING. 


IO7 


the  worship,  and  usefulness  of  the  House  of  God;  for  the 
sake  of  duty,  honesty,  and  honour;  to-day  and  always,  as 
habitual  and  generous  and  cheerful  givers,  give,  and  it 
shall  be  given  unto  you.  There  is  that  scattereth,  and 
yet  increaseth;  there  is  that  maketh  himself  rich,  yet  hath 
nothing;  there  is  that  withholdeth  more  than  is  meet,  and 
it  tendeth  only  to  poverty. 


MAMMON  WORSHIP. 

"  For  the  love  of  money  is  a  root  of  all  kinds  of  evil." —  i  TIM.  vi.  10. 

IN  the  fifth  of  the  chasms  which  form  the  abyss  of  Fraud, 
Dante,  in  his  Vision  of  Hell,  sees  a  cleft  marvellously  dark. 
It  reminds  him  of  the  lake  of  clammy  pitch  which  he  had 
seen  in  the  arsenal  of  Venice,  where  in  winter-time  the 
sailors  caulked  their  damaged  ships.  "So,"  he  says,  "not 
by  fire,  but  by  divine  art,  boiled  down  there  a  dense  pitch 
which  beplastered  its  banks  on  every  side.  It  I  saw,  but 
I  saw  nothing  else  there,  except  the  bubbles  which  the 
boiling  raised,  and  the  heaving  and  compressed  subsiding 
of  the  whole.  And,  while  I  was  gazing  down  fixedly  upon 
it,  my  guide  cried  out,  'Take  care,  take  care! '  A  demon 
came  running  by,  bearing  a  sinner  on  his  shoulders,  and 
shouted  to  his  fellow-demons:  'See,  here  is  one  of  Santa 
Zita's  elders  (from  Lucca).  Thrust  him  under  the  pitch 
while  I  return  for  more.  There  at  Lucca  they  turn  "Yes" 
into  "No"  for  money.'  Then,  as  the  other  fiends  rush  at 
the  hapless  wretch,  and  push  him  under  the  pitch,  they 
tauntingly  cry  to  him,  'Here  the  Sacred  Face  avails  not; 
here  thou  must  lie  underneath  the  pitch,  so  that,  if  thou 
canst,  thou  mayst  pilfer  privately.' ' 

Let  me  explain.  Dante's  vision  of  Hell  is  a  vision 
not  only  of  the  future  punishment  of  men,  but  also  of  their 
present  sins;  not  only  of  what  shall  be  the  case  with  the 
soul  hereafter,  but  also  of  what  is  the  case  with  the  soul 
now.  That  lake  of  pitch  is  the  dark,  evil,  slimy  sea  of 
usury,  malfeasance,  commercial  fraud,  feverish  speculation, 


MAMMON  WORSHIP. 


109 


sordid  avarice.  The  Italian  city  of  Lucca  was  infamous 
for  this  greed  of  gain.  Like  many  a  modern  city,  it  was 
wholly  given  over  to  the  idolatry  of  gold.  The  sinner 
whom  the  fiend  has  brought  from  thence  is  scornfully  called 
"one  of  Santa  Zita's  elders"  by  way  of  contrast.  For 
seventy  years  before  this  time  there  had  livecl  and  died  in 
Lucca  a  holy  servant-girl,  a  maid  of  all  work,  named  Zita, 
who,  living  and  dying  in  uttermost  lowliness  and  poverty, 
had  yet  been  sainted  for  her  good  deeds,  and  was  much 
nominally  honored  in  that  city  of  usurers  and  cheats. 
Lucca  prided  itself  on  a  very  ancient  and  holy  crucifix 
known  as  "the  Sacred  Face,"  and  the  demon  tells  the  greedy 
pilferer  that  no  hypocritic  adoration  of  Christ  or  His  cru- 
cifix will  avail  him  here.  But  how  forcible  is  the  emblem! 
how  awful  the  scene!  A  lake  of  pitch,  at  a  little  distance, 
looks  quite  resplendent  in  the  sun :  it  looks,  in  fact, 
exactly  like  a  lake  of  gold.  But  go  near,  and  it  is  pitch, 
not  gold.  Touch  it  rashly,  and  it  defiles  you.  It  even 
overglues  its  banks,  so  wide  is  its  polluting  influence.  So 
the  love  of  money  looks  respectable  and  even  resplendent, 
yet  it  is  full  of  peril.  Basely  gained,  ostentatiously  squan- 
dered, meanly  hoarded,  it  sticks  to  the  fingers,  defiles  the 
mind;  and,  while  its  outer  wave  overflows  with  filth  and 
baseness,  its  inner  depths  heave  and  bubble  as  with  excite- 
ment and  depression,  and  the  sighing  of  souls  which  will 
not  be  satisfied.  And  the  dark  dealings  of  fraud  are  pun- 
ished in  kind.  He  who  has  secretly  wallowed  in  them  here 
shall  wallow  there  in  an  agonized  obscurity,  as  undiscerni- 
ble  as  his  nefarious  life  on  earth. 

How  disproportionate,  how  vast  a  place  has  money 
ever  occupied,  as  now  it  does,  in  the  thoughts  and  desires 
of  man!  How  vainly  emphatic  are  the  warnings  of  Script- 


IIO  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY, 

ure  respecting  it!  How  many,  how  varied  the  crimes 
which  attend  its  servitude!  For  money,  men,  alike  rich 
and  poor,  have  been  ready  to  make  all  their  lives  a  lie  to 
themselves  and  a  fraud  upon  their  neighbours.  For  gold 
men  have  betrayed  their  country,  their  friends,  their  God, 
their  immorfal  souls.  For  gold  they  steal,  and  rob,  and 
break  open  houses,  and  commit  assaults  and  murders,  and 
become  the  terrors  and  scourges  of  society.  For  gold  men 
forge  and  cheat  and  start  bubble  companies,  and  tamper 
with  securities,  and  snatch  the  support  of  the  widow,  and 
steal  the  bread  of  the  fatherless.  For  gold  they  live  by 
trades  and  manufactures  which  are  the  curse  and  destruc- 
tion of  mankind.  For  gold  they  involve  whole  countries 
in  the  horrors  and  crimes  of  war.  For  gold  they  soil  the 
honour  of  their  sons,  and  sell  their  daughters  into  gilded 
misery,  and  poison  the  world  with  stagnant  gossip,  and 
stab  noble  reputations  in  the  dark.  For  gold  they  defraud 
the  hireling  of  his  wages,  and  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor, 
and  wring  the  means  of  personal  luxury  from  rotting  houses 
or  infamous  pursuits.  Gold  corrupts  trades  and  professions 
into  that  commercial  standard  which  is  often  little  better 
than  systematized  dishonesty.  Gold  can  condemn  the  inno- 
cent and  shield  the  guilty. 

"  Plate  sin  with  gold, 

And  the  strong  lance  of  justice  hurtless  breaks; 
Clothe  it  with  rags,  a  tiny  straw  will  pierce  it." 

"Look  into  the  history  of  any  civilized  nation,  analyze 
with  reference  to  this  one  cause  of  crime  and  misery  the 
lives  and  thoughts  of  their  nobles,  priests,  merchants,  and 
men  of  luxurious  life.  The  sin  of  the  whole  world  is 
essentially  the  sin  of  Judas.  Men  do  not  disbelieve  in 
Christ,  but  they  sell  Him."  O  my  friends,  let  every  one 


MAMMON  WORSHIP.  m 

of  us  —  poor  as  well  as  rich  —  take  heed  and  beware  of 
covetousness.  For  Mammon  is  a  jealous  God.  When 
once  a  man  has  accepted  his  shabby  gospel,  he  will  not  be 
content  to  leave  one  single  spark  of  nobleness  in  that  man's 
soul.  He  lives  in  the  pitchy  slime  of  base  hopes  and 
temptations.  For  Mammon,  the  churl  Nabal  threw  away 
his  life.  For  Mammon,  Achan  sold  his  whole  house.  For 
Mammon,  Balaam  profaned  the  vestal  fires  of  prophecy. 
For  Mammon,  Simon  Magus  wished  to  tamper  with  holy 
things.  For  Mammon,  Ananias  lied  to  the  Holy  Ghost. 
For  Mammon, —  yea,  for  thirty  paltry  pieces  of  silver,— 
Judas  sold  his  Lord  and  bartered  the  wretched  thing  which 
had  once  been  a  human  soul.  Oh  that  our  eyes  were  open, 
and  that  we  could  see  as  he  is  that  thrice  despicable  spirit, 
—  that  yellow,  withered,  mean,  accursed  devil,  with  luxury 
attending  him  at  his  right,  and  felony  on  his  left;  with 
care  grim  and  gaunt  stalking  at  his  heels  with  his  votaries 
grovelling  in  the  mud  around  him,  feeding  on  dust;  the 
serpent's  meat,  bowed  down  under  crushing  weights,  while 

"  Over  them  triumphant  death  his  dart 
Shakes,  but  delays  to  strike." 

When  we  speak  of  the  dangers  of  covetousness,  the  great 
mass  of  persons,  who  are  not  rich,  are  apt  to  think  that  the 
warning  applies  only  to  the  wealthy.  It  is  an  immense 
mistake.  The  old  woman  who  hoards  her  few  shillings 
and  tells  lies  about  them  in  a  back  street,  the  needy  clerk 
secretly  longing  for  the  death  of  some  one  who  may  leave 
him  ;£2O,  the  mechanic  fraudfully  trying  to  make  bad  work 
pass  for  good,  the  begging-letter  impostor,  the  hulking 
idler,  the  Anarchist  indulging  in  senseless  ravings  to  per- 
suade men  that  luck  will  come  to  them  by  the  ruins  of  tens 


II2  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

of  thousands  more  worthy  than  themselves, —  all  these  have 
quite  as  much  or  even  more  need  than  the  rich  to  take 
heed  and  beware  of  covetousness. 

This  is  a  message  to  all,  rich  and  poor  alike.  Gold  is  of 
so  little  value  that  its  possession  or  non-possession  makes, 
in  God's  sight,  simply  no  difference  in  human  life.  The 
rich  may  despise  Mammon,  though  they  are  rich ;  and  the 
poor  may  be  worshippers  of  Mammon,  though  they  are  poor. 
The  rich  by  his  use  of  wealth,  no  less  than  the  poor  by 
his  indifference  to  it,  may  pour  silent  contempt  on  gold. 
There  is  a  very  shallow  proverb  which  says  "that  it  is  easy 
to  be  virtuous  on  ten  thousand  a  year."  It  may  be  easy  to 
be  virtuous  as  the  world  counts  virtue,  but  it  is  quite  as 
hard  to  be  holy  as  God  counts  holiness  on  ten  thousand  a 
year  as  on  a  labourer's  pay.  Riches  may  increase,  and  yet 
not  harm  a  man,  if  he  sets  not  his  heart  upon  them.  Nev- 
ertheless, if  there  be  any  truth  in  Scripture,  there  is  in 
wealth  a  peril  and  a  snare  which  requires  constant  watch- 
fulness. You  know  who  it  was  who  said,  "  How  hardly 
shall  they'  that  have  riches  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven!"  George  Peabody  was  a  millionaire,  but  how  few 
can  say  as  he  does,  in  that  sentence  of  his  diary  carved 
upon  his  temporary  grave,  that  it  was  his  daily  prayer  to 
his  heavenly  Father  that  he  might  be  enabled  to  use  his 
wealth  for  the  good  of  his  fellow-men!  Many  men,  alas! 
become  only  the  harder,  the  less  generous,  the  less  useful, 
and  much  the  less  happy,  because  of  their  riches.  On  the 
whole,  the  absorbing  ambition  to  get  wealth,  which  is  the 
master  desire  of  so  many  minds,  is  about  as  poor  ambition 
as  there  can  be.  On  the  whole,  no  more  vulgar  advice 
could  be  given  to  the  mass  of  a  nation  than  Guizot  gave, 
when,  to  make  the  French  bourgeoisie  content  with  the 


MAMMON   WORSHIP.  U^ 

Orleans  government,  he  said  to  them,  Enrichissez-vous, — 
"  Enrich  yourselves !  "  We  want  more  examples  of  simplic- 
ity in  life.  We  want  public  examples  of  men 

"  Who  find  contentment's  very  core 

In  the  light  store 

And  daisied  path 

Of  poverty, 

And  know  how  more 
A  small  thing  that  the  righteous  hath 
Availeth  than  the  ungodly's  riches  great." 

Oh  that  we  all  desired  rather  to  live  richly  than  to  die 
rich,  to  do  rich  deeds  than  to  leave  rich  properties.  When 
a  man  dies,  his  fellow  Mammon-worshippers  ask,  "What 
did  he  die  worth?"  but  God  asks,  "Wherein  was  he 
worthy?"  "He  died  worth  a  million!  "  says. the  admiring 
world.  Ah  me!  in  reality  he  may  not  have  died  worth 
one  halfpenny,  as  God  counts  worth,  and  a  beggar  might 
have  refused  to  have  that  man's  character  as  an  alms.  A 
great  living  physician  told  me  how  once  he  was  attending 
the  death-bed  of  a  rich  man  who  seemed  as  if  he  could  not 
die;  for,  with  aimless  and  nervous  restlessness,  his  hands 
kept  moving  and  opening  and  shutting  over  the  counterpane. 
"What  is  the  matter?"  asked  the  physician.  "I  know," 
answered  the  son  for  his  speechless  father.  "Every  night, 
before  he  went  to  sleep,  my  father  liked  to  feel  and  handle 
some  of  his  bank-notes."  The  son  slipped  a  ;£io  note  into 
the  old  man's  hand,  and,  feeling,  handling,  and  clutching  it, 
he  died.  Ah  me!  that  ;£io  note  grasped  in  his  trembling 
hand, —  how  much  would  it  avail  him  before  the  awful  bar 
of  God?  Yet  how  many  men  die,  and  have  nothing  better 
to  show  to  God  than  that ! 

Men   sometimes    excuse    themselves    in  their  passionate 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DA  Y. 

love  for  gold  by  saying,  "  Oh,  if  I  were  but  rich,  I  could 
do  so  much  good,  so  much  more  good."  Such  a  remark  may 
be  intensely  hypocritical ;  but  even  when  it  is  sincere,  or 
half  sincere,  it  is  an  absolute  mistake.  In  the  first  place, 
we  are  only  called  upon  to  do  good  with  that  which  we 
have,  not  with  that  which  we  have  not.  We  may  all  say 
with  St.  Peter  and  St.  John,  "gold  I  have  none,  but  what  I 
have  give  I  thee."  If  we  have  nothing  else  to  give,  Christ 
will  only  ask  us  whether  we  gave  in  His  name  that  cup  of 
cold  water  which  every  one  alike  can  give.  In  His  sight, 
the  widow's  two  farthings  may  be  a  real  gift,  and  the 
;£i,ooo  of  the  rich  be  no  gift  at  all.  The  question  is  non 
quantum,  sed  ex  quanta, —  not  what  we  give,  but  the  pro- 
portion which  it  bears  to  what  we  could  give.  The  best 
good  in  the  world  has  always  been  done  by  personal  ser- 
vice, and  beyond  all  proportion  poor  men  have  been  greater 
benefactors  of  the  world  than  the  wealthy.  Run  over  the 
names  of  all  who  have  made  nations  great  and  kept  them  so, 
the  names  of  all  the  world's  greatest  benefactors,  reformers, 
poets,  artists,  writers,  philanthropists  —  scarcely  one  among 
them  all  has  been  rich.  Were  the  apostles  rich?  What 
was  the  monetary  value  of  St.  Paul's  cloak  and  parchments, 
which  were  all  he  had  to  leave?  How  much  would  any 
one  have  given  for  the  sheepskin  coat  of  St.  Anthony,  or 
for  the  brown  serge  of  St.  Francis,  or  the  poor  rosary  of 
St.  Vincent  de  Paul?  Was  not  that  saintly  poverty  one 
secret  of  Luther's  power?  Wesley  only  possessed  two  sil- 
ver spoons.  Would  he  have  done  more,  or  as  much,  if  he 
had  had  ten  thousand  a  year?  St.  Edmund  of  Canterbury 
used  to  leave  his  money  on  the  window-sill  for  those  to 
take  it  who  would;  and  often,  strewing  it  over  with  dust, 
he  would  exclaim,  "Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust."  '"''Satis 


MAMMON  WORSHIP.  n$ 

viatici  ad  calum" — "Enough  money  to  get  to  heaven 
with,"  said  the  dying  Archbishop  Warham,  when  his  stew- 
ard told  him  that  he  had  but  ^30.  Would  the  world  have 
thought  as  much  of  nim  if  he,  like  so  many  worldly  and 
vulgar-minded  prelates,  had  enriched  his  family  out  of  the 
revenues  of  the  Church?  "I  have  no  time  to  get  rich," 
said,  with  disdain,  both  Faraday  and  Agassiz.  The  Char- 
ity of  Giotto's  picture  gives  corn  and  flowers,  and  receives 
from  heaven  a  human  heart ;  but  she  tramples  on  bags  of 
gold.  Most  of  the  great  heroes  of  antiquity  also  were 
poor.  More  to  mankind  is  one  page  of  the  Bedford  tinker 
than  all  the  banks  of  the  Rothschilds.  More  to  God  is 
one  self-sacrificing  Christian  than  whole  generations  of 
gilded  and  self-indulgent  youths.  More  is  one  poor  true 
woman  than  legions  of  the  frivolous  who  have  toiled 
through  the  pleasureless  dissipations  and  glittering  emp- 
tiness of  a  dozen  seasons.  "The  blessing  of  the  Lord 
that  maketh  rich;  and  he  addeth  no  sorrow  with  it." 

Let  us,  then,  get  rid  of  the  idle  fancy  that,  if  we  were 
rich,  we  could  do  more  good,  and  of  the  yet  idler  fancy 
that,  if  we  were  rich,  we  should  be  more  happy  than  now 
we  may  be.  "No  more  desire  riches,"  said  the  wise  Eras- 
mus, "than  a  feeble  beast  desires  a  heavy  burden."  "I 
live  like  a  galley-slave,  and  am  worn  out  with  care,"  wrote 
one  of  the  most  successful  of  modern  millionaires.  Yes, 
for  God's  best  gifts  are  His  commonest, — the  gifts  which 
He  gives  to  all,  the  things  which  we  can  all  see  and 
all  enjoy.  "George,"  said  a  very  rich  man  to  his  elder 
brother,  "you  are  a  struggling  man,  you  can  only  just 
support  yourself,  you  have  made  no  money,  and  I  have  got 
money  enough  to  buy  up  your  whole  town,  bank  and  all ;  — 
and  yet  your  life  has  been  a  success,  and  mine  a  dead 


IX6  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

failure."      "Having    food   and    raiment,"    says    Scripture, 
"let  us  be  therewith  content." 

My  friends,  all  that  I  have  said  applies  to  all  of  us 
alike.  Some  few  are  rich,  the  great  majority  of  us  are 
poor:  there  is  no  intrinsic  evil  in  riches,  no  inherent  bless- 
ing in  poverty.  Rich  or  poor,  high  or  low,  our  chances  of 
happiness  here  and  of  heaven  hereafter  are  exactly  equal. 
For  alike  and  equally  we  may  be  innocent  and  generous, 
and  pure  and  kind;  and  it  is  on  those  things,  not  on  wealth 
or  poverty,  that  happiness  and  hope  depend.  If  we  are 
poor,  let  us  be  content;  for  our  treasure  may  be  with  our 
heart  in  heaven.  If  we  be  rich,  let  us  also  be  rich  in  good 
works.  If  our  riches  have  come  honourably;  if,  when  they 
have  come,  we  do  not  set  our  heart  upon  them ;  if  we  ac- 
count ourselves  the  stewards  of  them,  not  the  owners ;  if  we 
learn  the  luxury  of  doing  good  with  them,  then,  indeed,  we 
shall  have  made  friends  of  the  Mammon  of  unrighteous- 
ness. A  man's  wealth  may  turn  into  pride  and  splendour, 
and  little  else;  and  then,  assuredly,  he  will  neither  be  the 
better  for  it  nor  the  happier.  Or,  as  one  has  said,  "it 
may  put  on  the  snow-white  robes  of  an  angel,  and  pass 
out  into  the  streets,  and  gather  up  little  children  in  its 
arms,  and  do  the  Saviour's  work.  It  is  this  last  trans- 
formation of  wealth  that  brings  the  most  blessedness  to 
the  place  where  it  goes  and  the  bosom  from  which  it 
comes.  Strange  law  of  our  earth,  rich  and  poor  may 
alike  do  good  or  do  harm:  the  rich  man  may  touch  the 
world,  and  it  shall  sink  lower  in  misery  and  common- 
place, or  he  can  touch  it,  and  it  will  rise  up  into  nobler 
and  happier  manhood."  The  poor  man  may  waste  his 
life  in  squalid  idleness  or  besot  it  with  stupefying  drink, 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  he  may  make  his  home  like  the 


MAMMON'  WORSHIP, 


II/ 


home  of  Nazareth,  and  his  life  wealthy  with  the  great 
gain  of  contentment  with  godliness,  and  his  poverty 
blessed,  accepted,  patient,  innocent.  Rich  or  poor,  we 
may  alike  be  free  from  that  love  of  money  which  is  a  root 
of  all  kinds  of  evils.  God  cares  less  than  nothing  for  what 
we  have.  He  cares  solely  for  what  we  are.  Read  once 
more  the  life  of  our  blessed  Lord  in  the  Gospels,  the  birth 
in  the  manger,  the  thirty  years  in  the  shop  of  the  humble 
carpenter,  the  three  years  of  homeless  and  wandering  min- 
istry,—  shall  not  these  teach  us  not  to  envy  the  rich,  not 
to  desire  riches?  Would  not  all  our  lives  be  more*  rich 
to  God,  more  peaceful,  more  upright,  more  contented,  if 
only  we  were  wholly  convinced  that  "a  man's  life  consist- 
eth  not  in  the  multitude  of  things  that  he  possesseth," 
that  "man  doth  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word 
that  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God  "  ? 


RELIGIONISM. 

"  He  hath  shewed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good ;  and  what  doth  the  Lord  re- 
quire of  thee  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God?"— MiCAHvi.  8. 

IT  would  be  impossible  to  pass  over  these  deeply  inter- 
esting words  of  the  prophet  Micah.  They  express  the  true 
object  of  all  revelation,  which  is  to  make  men  good;  they 
express  the  inmost  meaning  of  all  life,  which  is  the  attain- 
ment of  holiness.  Two  passages  of  Scripture  propound  the 
most  momentous  question  which  the  mind  of  .man  can  for- 
mulate, and  give  the  very  clearest  and  plainest  answer  which 
the  language  of  man  can  express.  One  is  this  verse:  the 
other  is  the  passage  in  which  the  young  ruler  asks,  "What 
shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal  life?"  There  the  answer  is, 
"If  thou  wijt  enter  into  life,  keep  the  commandments": 
here  the  answer  is,  "  He  hath  shewed  thee,  O  man,  what  is 
good;  and  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee  but  to  do 
justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God?"  Unmistakable  in  their  plainness,  these  words 
sweep  away  the  cobwebs  and  confusions  of  ages.  Frankly 
accepted,  they  would  be  an  eternal  cure  for  all  the  mala- 
dies which  in  age  after  age  have  afflicted  religion.  They 
show  that  the  aim  of  religion  is  to  elevate  character,  to 
purify  conduct,  to  promote  goodness;  they  sum  up  the 
mighty  spiritual  teaching  of  the  prophets;  they  herald  the 
essential  moral  revelation  of  the  Son  of  God.  There  are 
two  streams  which  flow  side  by  side  through  the  Old 
Testament  and  through  the  history  of  the  Christian 


RELIGIONISM. 

Church,  and  frequently  do  not  commingle  their  waters, — 
the  stream  of  religion  and  the  stream  of  righteousness. 
The  word  "religion"  is  used  in  a  loose,  inaccurate  way 
for  various  things;  but  in  its  proper  English  mean- 
ing—  as  when  our  Bible  speaks  of  "the  Jew's  religion," 
and  as  when  Milton  speaks  of  "gay  religions  full  of 
pomp  and  gold" — the  word  implies  certain  opinions  and 
certain  ordinances;  it  means  a  set  of  doctrines;  it  means  a 
mode  of  worship.  Now,  outward  ordinances,  when  their 
importance  is  exaggerated,  tend  to  become  burdensome  and 
superstitious,  and  religious  opinions,  when  maintained  by 
ambition  and  self-interest,  have  deluged  the  world  with 
crime ;  and  that  is  why  the  great  poet  Lucretius  represents 
religion  as  a  lurid  and  menacing  spectre,  and  writes  the 
famous  words  "  Tantum  religio  potuit  suadere  malormn" 
"So  many  curses  could  religion  cause!  "  To  avoid  confu- 
sion, however,  I  will  call  this  not  religion,  but  religionism. 
Now,  a  stream  of  religionism  flows  through  the  Old  Tes- 
tament. It  centred  in  the  Temple,  the  Levitical  ordi- 
nances, the  whole  ceremonial  law;  and  the  same  sort  of 
externalism  belongs  as  much  to  idolatry  as  to  Judaism. 
All  this  code  has  neither  value  nor  significance  in  itself, 
but  solely  in  so  far  as  it  may  be  a  help  or  adjunct  to  higher 
things.  Religionism,  when  it  ends  in  opinions  or  observ- 
ances, is  worthless.  Any  impure  and  ignorant  youth,  any 
empty-headed  and  sour-hearted  girl,  any  worldly  or  greedy 
Dives,  can  in  this  sense  be  religious.  Persons  of  all  classes 
are  delighted  to  believe  that  with  such  cheap  and  easy 
superficiality  God  is  pleased.  Hence  all  that  was  poorest 
and  most  pagan  in  Judaism  eagerly  seized  on  this  element 
in  their  sacred  books.  They  would  please  God  by  ortho- 
doxy, ritual,  gifts,  fastings,  genuflections,  holy  days,  sac- 


120  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

rifices,  the  right  way  of  burning  the  two  kidneys  and  the 
fat.  This  would  give  them  a  delightful  sense  of  being  very 
religious,  while  they  let  their  slanderous  tongues  run  riot, 
and  sated  with  worldliness  their  greedy  hearts.  The  relig- 
ious reform  of  Hezekiah  and  others,  being  mainly  outward, 
easily  slid  into  the  pagan  frippery  and  superstition  of 
Manasseh;  and  it  ended  in  the  worship  of  the  dead  letter, 
the  substitution  of  tradition  for  truth,  and  of  religiosity  for 
godliness.  It  reached  the  splendour  of  its  zenith  in  Phari- 
saism, which  paid  scrupulous  tithes  of  mint,  anise,  and 
cumin,  but  forgot  justice,  righteousness,  and  faith.  It 
tried  to  establish  itself  forever  by  committing  the  deadliest 
crime  which  even  religionism  ever  has  achieved;  it  said, 
"This  is  the  Heir;  come,  let  us  kill  him,  and  the  inheri- 
tance shall  be  ours."  In  the  same  endeavour  —  the  en- 
deavour to  make  opinions  and  to  make  observances  stand  in 
the  place  of  sincerity  and  righteousness  —  it  scourged  St. 
John,  it  imprisoned  St.  Peter,  it  cursed  St.  Paul,  it  beheaded 
St.  James,  it  stoned  St.  Stephen.  Yet  they  who  committed 
all  these  deadly  crimes  were  very  religious.  They  would 
have  held  up  their  hands  in  horror  and  amazement,  had  you 
called  them  irreligious;  they  would  have  said,  "Our  whole 
life  is  religion,  and  we  think  of  nothing  else."  Ay,  when 
religion  is  put  in  the  place  of  righteousness,  when,  instead 
of  being  regarded  as  a  mere  adjunct  to  godliness,  it  is  sub- 
stituted for  godliness,  then  it  becomes  a  deadly  thing. 
And,  therefore,  side  by  side  with  this  stream  of  religious 
ordinances  flows  through  most  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
through  all  the  New,  the  richer,  purer,  deeper  stream  of 
righteousness.  And  righteousness  expresses,  and  alone 
expresses,  the  essence  of  true  religion;  for  true  religion 
is  "a  good  mind  and  a  good  life."  It  is  not  an  affair  of 


RELIGIONISM.  I2I 

copes  and  candles  and  such  childish  things;  but  it  is  some- 
thing which  restores  man  to  God.  It  enables  us  not 
merely  to  wear  phylacteries  and  to  make  long  prayers,  but 
to  deny  our  wills,  to  rule  our  tongues,  to  soften  our 
tempers,  to  mortify  our  evil  passions,  to  learn  patience, 
humility,  meekness,  forgiveness,  continuance  in  well-do- 
ing; it  is  "the  will  in  the  reason,  and  love  in  the  will." 

Ask  a  dogmatist  the  question,  "What  must  I  do  to  be 
saved?"  and  he  will  perhaps  give  you  some  elaborate  meta- 
physical definition,  and  will  tell  you  that  he  who  would  be 
saved  must  thus  think  of  the  Trinity.  Ask  a  party  relig- 
ionist what  you  must  do  to  be  saved,  and  he  perhaps  will 
say  to  you  that  you  must  hear  the  Church,  and  believe  in 
the  Real  Presence.  Ask  Samuel,  David,  Isaiah,  Amos, 
Micah,  Jeremiah,  the  four  evangelists,  the  twelve  apostles  — 
ask  your  Lord  and  Master  Himself, —  and  their  answer  will 
be  different  not  only  in  the  letter,  but  in  the  entire  spirit. 
It  will  not  be  "You  must  believe  in  this  or  that  particular 
doctrine";  it  will  not  be  "You  must  practise  this  or  that 
special  ordinance":  it  will  be  simply,  "If  thou  wouldst 
enter  into  life,  keep  the  Commandments."  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  original  intent  of  Levitical  rules  and  Temple 
proprieties,  they  had  become  so  terribly  perverted,  so 
fatally  meaningless,  that  the  greatest  prophets  speak  of 
them  again  and  again  with  sweeping  and  exceptionless 
depreciation.  "Hath  the  Lord  as  great  delight  in  burnt- 
offerings  and  sacrifices  as  in  obeying  the  voice  of  the 
Lord?  Behold,  to  obey  is  better  than  sacrifice,  and  to 
hearken  than  the  fat  of  rams."  So  spake  Samuel.  "Thou 
requirest  not  sacrifice,  else  I  would  give  it  Thee;  but  Thou 
delightest  not  in  burnt-offerings."  So  sang  the  Psalmist. 
"And  now,  Israel,  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee," 


122  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

asks  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  "but  to  walk  in  all  His 
ways  and  to  love  Him?"  "To  what  purpose  is  the  multi- 
tude of  your  sacrifices  unto  me?  saith  the  Lord.  Bring  no 
more  vain  oblations;  incense  is  an  abomination  unto  Me; 
your  hands  are  full  of  blood.  Wash  you,  make  you  clean; 
put  away  the  evil  of  your  doings  from  before  Mine  eyes; 
cease  to  do  evil;  learn  to  do  well."  So  wrote  Isaiah.  "I 
hate,  I  despise  your  feast  days,"  says  Amos;  "but  let  judg- 
ment run  down  as  waters,  and  righteousness  as  a  mighty 
stream."  And,  on  the  positive  side,  to  the  question, 
"Who  shall  ascend  to  the  hill  of  the  Lord,  and  who  shall 
stand  in  His  holy  place?"  the  answer  is  nothing  else  than, 
"  He  that  hath  clean  hands  and  a  pure  heart,  and  hath  not 
lifted  up  his  mind  unto  vanity,  nor  sworn  to  deceive  his 
neighbour."  And  what  does  the  Preacher  tell  you  is  the  end 
of  the  whole  matter?  Is  it  to  believe  in  a  vast  mass  of  tra- 
ditional propositions?  No.  Is  it  to  go  through  a  numer- 
ous huddle  of  fantastical  pomps  and  cumbersome  ceremo- 
nies? No.  But  the  whole  of  the  matter  is,  "Fear  God, 
and  keep  His  commandments;  for  that  is  the  whole  duty  of 
man." 

That  was  how,  one  after  another,  the  greatest  of  the 
prophets  spoke;  and  the  New  Testament  so  completely 
endorses  their  spiritual  ideal  that,  while  every  page  and 
verse  of  it  breathe  of  righteousness,  you  scarcely  find  any 
religionism  in  it  at  all,  scarcely  any  organization  even  the 
most  rudimentary,  scarcely  any  ritual  even  the  simplest, 
scarcely  any  dogmatic  creed  even  the  most  brief.  What 
was  the  sum  total  of  the  preaching  of  the  glorious  Eremite, 
John  the  Baptist?  Just  two  words,  Repent,  Obey.  What 
is  the  sum  total  of  the  moral  revelation  of  Christ?  Just 
two  words,  the  two  words  carved  on  the  statue  of  that 


RELIGIONISM. 


123 


noble  philanthropist*  which  has  just  been  added  to  our 
Abbey,  the  two  words,  "Love,  Serve."  Not  one  syllable 
did  Christ  say  for  the  traditionalism  which  in  His  day 
passed  for  the  only  orthodoxy;  not  one  syllable  did  He  say 
in  favor  of  all  the  elaborate  ablutions,  vestments,  fringes, 
phylacteries,  genuflections,  feasts,  fasts,  long  prayers,  which 
then  passed  for  indispensable  ceremonial;  but  while  He 
was  the  Friend  of  sinners,  and  forgave  the  penitent  harlot 
and  approved  of  the  prayer  of  the  publican,  He  struck  the 
mere  professing  religionist  with  flash  after  flash  of  His 
tqrrible  denunciation.  And  the  teaching  of  every  one  of 
His  apostles  was  the  very  antithesis  of  the  spirit  of  exter- 
nalism.  They  seemed  to  treat  that  with  sovereign  disdain, 

-> 

as  though  it  belonged  to  the  infinitely  little.  Their  lan- 
guage is  identical  with  that  of  the  great  prophets.  "Cir- 
cumcision,"-—then  regarded  as  the  very  first  of  necessary 
ordinances, — "circumcision,"  said  St.  Paul,  "is  nothing, 
and  uncircumcision  is  nothing,  but  the  keeping  of  the  com- 
mandments of  God."  "I  am  afraid  of  you,"  he  says  to  the 
Galatians:  "having  begun  in  the  spirit,  do  ye  now  end  in 
the  flesh?"  What  was  the  sum  total  of  the  preaching  of 
St.  Paul?  Two  words,  "in  Christ";  and  again  two  words, 
Faith,  Works.  What  was  the  sum  total  of  the  teaching 
of  St.  James?  Two  words,  Compassion,  Unworldliness. 
What  was  the  sum  total  of  the  teaching  of  St.  John?  Ohe 
word,  Love.  He  explains  his  apparent  truism,  "  He  that 
doeth  righteousness  is  righteous,"  by  that  deep  account  of 
what  true  holiness  means:  "He  that  doeth  righteousness 
is  born  of  God."  You  know  that  popes  and  cardinals  and 
priests  burned  John  Huss;  and  when 'they  sent  him  to  the 
stake,  as  they  sent  many  another  saint  of  Christ  who  hated 
mummeries  and  lies  and  bondage,  they  clothed  him  in  a 

*The  Earl  of  Shaftesbury. 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

sanbenito,  a  robe  painted  all  over  with  flames  and  devils, 
and  they  told  him  that  from  the  earthly  fire  he  should  pass 
.to  the  endless  torments  of  the  fire  which  is  never  quenched. 
But  the  angels,  meanwhile,  were  clothing  in  the  san- 
benito not  the  victims,  but  the  priestly  inquisitors;  for  it 
was  they  who  were  the  murderers,  it  was  they,  and  not  he, 
who  did  not  righteousness; — and  "he  that  committeth  sin 
is  of  the  devil."  When  Christ  was  asked  what  was  the  one 
test  by  which  you  could  know  true  teachers  from  false,  was 
it,  " By  their  doctrines  ye  shall  know  them,"  as  men  have 
most  fatally  taught?  Nothing  of  the  kind.  It  was,  "By 
their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them."  To  preach  these  princi- 
ples is  to  preach  the  very  essential  heart  of  the  Scriptural 
morality;  but  yet  it  is  a  preaching  that  invariably  makes 
religionists  very  angry.  For  its  importance  lies  in  this, — 
that  it  is  the  very  touchstone  which  discriminates  between 
true  and  false  religion.  It  sweeps  away,  at  any  rate,  the 
exaggerated  importance  attached  to  the  adjuncts,  the  scaf- 
foldings, the  traditions  and  ordinances  of  men,  which  to  so 
many  make  up  the  whole  of  their  religious  life. 

Nothing  is  more  important  than  that  you  should  know 
whether  your  religion  is  a  sincerity  or  whether  it  is  a  sham. 
The  Bible  teaches  you  —  as  I  have  shown,  and  as  I  could 
show  you  over  and  over  and  over  again  —  that  righteousness 
and  holiness  are  the  inmost  essence  and  the  only  outcome  of 
true  religion;  that  they  are  the  very  end  and  object  of  your 
life;  that,  if  you  have  attained  to  them,  you  may  stand  free 
in  the  liberty  wherewith  Christ  hath  made  you  free, —  free 
from  all  morbid  scrupulosities,  free  from  all  priestly  domi- 
nation, free  from  all  carnal  ordinances,  free  from  all  weak 
and  beggarly  elements,  free  from  all  petty  rules  about 
things  which  perish  in  the  using.  If  you  do  not  possess 


RELIGIONISM. 


125 


this  purity  of  heart  and  righteousness  of  life,  the  most 
orthodox  opinions  and  the  most  elaborate  ritual  in  the 
world  are  not  one  whit  more  pleasing  to  God  than  sounding 
brass  or  tinkling  cymbal,  and  they  will  weigh  no  more  in 
your  favour  than  the  small  dust  in  the  scales  of  the 
balance.  Are  you, —  as  I  have  asked  before, —  in  God's 
sight,  not  deceiving  yourself,  but  going  up  into  the  tri- 
bunal of  your  own  conscience,  and  there  setting  yourself 
before  yourself?  Are  you  in  truth  a  good  man  or  a  good 
woman?  If  you  are,  then,  though  every  Pharisee  who  ever 
lived  should  hate  you,  and  though  every  Church  in  the 
world  should  excommunicate  you,  and  though  every  priest 
that  ever  lived  should  hurl  at  you  his  separate  anathema, 
as  they  once  did  at  the  King  of  Saints,  yet  to  you  the 
golden  gates  of  heaven  shall  open,  harmonious  on  their 
golden  hinges,  and  you  shall  be  folded  forever  under  the 
wings  of  Eternal  Love.  But  if  you  are  not  in  God's  sight 
simply  a  good  man  or  a  good  woman,  then  you  may,  like 
an  ascetic  of  old,  torture  yourself,  for  long  years  together, 
with  fasts  and  miseries;  or,  like  St.  Simeon  Sty lites,  you 
may  bow  yourself  twelve  hundred  times  'a  day;  or,  like 
another  saint,  you  may  make  your  boast  that  you  daily  offer 
seven  hundred  prayers;  and,  after  all  this,  you  may  say  to 
Christ  your  Lord,  "  Have  we  not  prophesied  in  Thy  name, 
and  in  Thy  name  wrought  miracles,  and  in  Thy  name  done 
many  wonderful  works?"-  —but  if,  in  spite  of  this  external- 
ism  and  profession,  you  have  not  truly  loved  God,  and  have 
not  been  true  to  your  neighbour, —  true  by  God' 's  standard, 
and  not  by  the  conventional  standard  of  the  world  on  the 
one  hand,  or  of  churches  and  party  on  the  other  —  if,  I 
say,  you  have  not  been  thus  essentially  true  to  God  and 
man,  then  shall  He  say  unto  you,  "I  never  knew  you." 


I26  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

I  know  well  that  this  is  an  old  lesson.  I  know  that  I 
have  tried  to  insist  an  it  before;  yes,  and  I  may  have  to 
do  so  again,  for  it  is  the  one  lesson  which  insincere  pro- 
fession tries  to  escape,  and  the  one  lesson  to  which  it  must 
be  pinned  down  by  the  sword-point  of  the  Word  of  God. 
What  God  wants  is  not  so-called  orthodoxy,  but  "truth  in 
the  inward  parts."  What  will  avail  you  is  not  any  amount 
of  religiosity,  but  righteousness.  There  are  thousands  of 
religious  persons  who  would  attach  immense  importance  to 
such  small  matters  as  whether  a  clergyman  does  this  or  that 
little  thing,  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  badge  of  party; 
or  whether  we  define  Christ's  presence  in  the  elements 
materially  or  spiritually;  or  whether  we  hold  the  Bible  to 
be  or  to  contain  the  revelation  of  God;  or  whether  we  think 
that  every  poor,  wretched,  feeble  sinner  goes,  the  instant  he 
dies,  to  writhe  for  endless  trillions  of  years  in  sulphurous 
flames,  or  whether  we  may  believe  something  larger  of  the 
mercy  of  God.  Well,  all  this  may  or  may  not  be  important 
as  opinion,  and  may  or  may  not  be  important  as  ritual;  but 
our  opinions  the  one  way  or  the  other,  and  our  ritual  the 
one  way  or  the  other,  are  of  quite  infinitesimal  value  as  re- 
gards the  saving  of  our  souls.  God  does  not  care  for  our 
opinions  at  all,  if  only  they  be  honest;  He  does  not  care 
about  our  ritual ;  but  He  does  require  our  goodness.  With- 
out that  goodness,  without  that  kindness,  without  purity, 
without  honesty,  without  truthfuTness,  without  unselfish 
humility,  and  that  rarest  of  all  virtues,  the  love  of  truth,— 
without  these  all  our  opinions  or  rituals  may  only  mean  that 
our  leprosy  is  white  as  snow. 

The  reason  why  it  is  necessary  to  insist  on  this  is  the 
eternal  Pharisaism  of  the  human  heart,  which  prefers  formal- 
ism to  spirituality,  and  which  causes  a  constant  recrudes- 


RELIGIONISM, 


127 


cence  of  Judaism  in  the  heart  of  Christianity.  Very  early, 
from  entire  ignorance  of  the  real  relation  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  the  New,  there  arose,  in  spite  of  the  whole  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  a  disastrous  confusion  between  the  Chris- 
tian ministry  and  the  Jewish  priesthood.  And  there  fol- 
lowed a  rapid  glorification  of  shibboleths  and  glorification 
of  ordinances.  The  sacraments  were  soon  regarded  as  magic 
amulets,  and  Christ's  presence  was  thought  to  be  nearer  if  it 
was  localized  in  the  sacred  bread.  The  grace  of  the  Spirit 
was  confined  to  mechanical  transmissions;  none  were  "relig- 
ious "  unless  they  went  to  deserts  or  monasteries,  or  tortured 
themselves  with  fasting  and  scourging;  but,  if  all  this 
teaching  in  Scripture  which  I  have  quoted  be  true,  such 
things  are  not  what  God  requires,  and — for  whatever  else  they 
may  be  valuable  —  are,  at  any  rate,  valueless  for  salvation. 
And  religion  became  more  and  more  corrupted.  The  con- 
ceit of  infallible  opinion  became  a  horrible  curse  to  man- 
kind; the  blood  of  ten  thousand  martyrs  is  on  its  head,  and 
the  bitterness  of  millions  of  broken  hearts  lies  at  its  door. 
What  was  called  orthodoxy,  what  was  called  Catholicity, 
was  often  hideous  error,  despicable  for  its  ignorance  and 
execrable  for  its  cruelties.  Men  were  massacred  wholesale 
for  supposed  mistaken  tenets,  while  vice  and  villany 
flaunted  in  high  places  unrebuked.  A  pope  steeped  to  the 
lips  in  infamy  founded  the  Inquisition.  Murderers  and 
adulterers  died  in  the  odour  of  sanctity,  if  they  professed 
zeal  for  orthodoxy  and  subservience  to  the  priests.  Charles 
V.  and  Philip  II.,  men  grossly  immoral  in  personal  charac- 
ter, doomed  eighteen  hundred  innocent  victims  to  the  scaf- 
fold or  the  stake,  in  the  Netherlands  alone,  for  such  crimes 
as  eating  flesh  in  Lent,  or  reading  the  Psalms  in  their 
native  language.  When,  after  the  Renaissance,  "Greece 


I28  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

arose  from  the  dead  with  the  New  Testament  in  her  hand," 
when  "the  bright  and  blissful  Reformation,  by  divine 
power,  strook  through  the  black  and  settled  night  of  igno- 
rance and  anti-Christian  tyranny,  and  the  sweet  odour  of  the 
returning  gospel  embalmed  men's  souls  with  the  brilliancy 
of  heaven,"  there  was  a  brief  bursting  of  this  iron  network 
of  false  traditions.  But  the  yoke  was  soon  reimposed  in 
other  forms,  because  men  who  love  moral  license  love  also 
spiritual  serfdom.  And  at  this  very  day  there  are  many 
whom  I  do  not  wrong  in  saying, —  for  they  make  it  their 
open  boast, —  there  are  many  who  are  trying  to  undo  as  far 
as  they  dare  the  work  of  the  Reformation.  But  the  Refor- 
mation was  nothing  but  the  sweeping  away  of  accumulated 
falsities  and  mountainous  corruptions.  And  if  —  may  God 
avert  the  omen !  —  but  if  the  Church  of  England  should 
grow  gradually  false  to  the  principle  that  she  is  a  Re- 
formed Church,  one  thing  then  I  see  with  the  absolute  cer- 
tainty of  prophecy,  that  there  will  be  from  her  a  vast- 
secession, —  "Every  knee  that  hath  not'  bowed  to  Baal,  and 
every  mouth  that  has  not  kissed  him."  If, — and  I  say  again 
may  God  avert  the  omen !  —  but  if  the  Church  of  England 
should  indeed  dwindle  and  degenerate  into  a  feeble  imita- 
tion of  the  Church  of  Rome,  with  a  pale  reflexion  of  her 
doctrines  and  a  poor  copy  of  her  practices,  then  sooner  or 
later,  if  truth  be  truth,  she  will  collapse  into  irremediable 
ruin,  and  upon  those  ruins  shall  be  built  once  more  a  truer 
and  a  purer  fold. 

But  meanwhile  the  lesson  for  us  is  clear,  and  it  is  this : 
Our  religious  opinions  may  be  false;  our  party  shibboleths 
may  be  but  the  blurred  echoes  of  our  ignorance  and  our  in- 
competence; our  private  interpretations  of  Scripture  may 
be  no  better  than  grotesque  nonsense  in  their  presumptuous 


RELIGIONISM. 


129 


falsity;  and  all  this  may  not  be  at  all  fatal  to  us,  if  by  some 
divine  deliverance  from  our  opinionated  follies  we  still  do 
justly,  and  love  mercy,  and  walk  humbly  with  our  God. 
But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  any  one  of  you  here  present, 
while  he  prides  himself  on  his  orthodoxy  or  on  his  Church- 
manship,  is  mean  in  his  conduct,  false  in  his  judgments, 
dishonest  in  trade,  a  slanderer  in  society,  impure  in  life:  — 
if  he  be  a  liar, —  and  many  a  man  who  calls  himself  relig- 
ious, and  many  a  man  who  tries  to  stand  on  good  terms 
with  the  world,  is  a  liar  in  God's  sight, —  if  in  his  heart,  in 
spite  of  his  profession,  he  be  a  false  witness,  or  a  covetous 
man  who  is  an  idolater,  he  may  present  himself  at  the  wed- 
ding feast,  but  he  has  not  on  the  wedding  garment.  But 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  any  one  of  you  be  indeed  pure,  and 
kind,  and  true ;  if  you  always  admire  that  which  is  admira- 
ble and  follow  that  which  is  noble;  if  in  humility  and  love 
you  be  a  follower  of  Christ's  example,— you  may  die  hated 
by  all  the  world  and  hated  by  all  the  nominal  Church,  yet 
your  Saviour,  in  whose  footsteps  you  humbly  desire  to 
walk,  shall  decide  your  destinies  for  ever,  when  He  shall 
whisper  to  your  weary  spirit,  "Well  done,  good  and  faithful 
servant ! " 

And,  if  you  would  have  the  moral  of  this  chapter,  it  is 
this :  "  O  ye  that  love  the  Lord,  see  ye  hate  the  thing  which 
is  evil."  Do  not  talk  about  your  views,  or  your  party,  or 
your  observances;  do  not  deceive  yourselves  with  your  re- 
ligion, which  may  be  but  vain,  but  search  yourselves  with 
candles  as  to  your  real  character.  What  you  think,  how 
you  worship,  to  what  sect  or  party  you  belong  —  all  of  you 
in  a  moment  could  tell  us  that;  but  God  is  not  the  leader 
of  a  sect  or  the  champion  of  a  party.  God  trieth  the  reins, 
He  searcheth  the  heart.  He  will  not  ask  you  what  you  were 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

called,  but  what  you  were.  Try  yourself,  judge  yourself. 
You  may  be  zealous  for  parties  or  views  ;  but  are  your 
hearts  set  upon  righteousness,  O  ye  people?  If  not,  then 
cleanse  your  hands,  ye  sinners;  purify  your  hearts,  ye 
double-minded!  That,  through  Christ's  mercy,  shall  avail 
you;  that  shall  avail  you  by  the  merits  of  His  infinite  sac- 
rifice,—  that,  and  nothing  else. 


ATHEISM. 

"Thou  believest  in  one  Goa;  thou  doest  well." — JAMES  ii.  19. 

Is  EVEN  this  much  true  in  any  deep  sense?  He  who  pro- 
fesses openly  that  he  believes  in  no  God  is  an  atheist.  Is 
the  man  much  better  than  an  atheist  who,  acknowledging 
God,  acts  as  though  there  were  none?  Theoretical  atheism 
says  with  its  lips,  "There  is  no  God " :  practical  atheism 
says  the  same  thing  by  its  life.  Is  it  less  atheism  than  the 
other?  The  bold  rebel  who,  bidden  to  go  work  in  his 
father's  vineyard,  said,  "I  will  not," — was  he  so  much 
worse  than  the  smooth  hypocrite  who  said,  "I  go,  Sir," 
and  went  not?  Alas!  it  might  be  possible  to  look  round 
us  to-day  and  to  be  driven  to  the  conviction  that  even  this 
most  elementary  of  all  religious  beliefs  —  this  belief  which 
is  as  the  primitive  granite  on  which  all  other  strata  of 
belief  must  rest, —  has  been  loosened  and  corroded.  Many 
of  our  literary  and  scientific  men  avow  their  disbelief: 
others  are  ostentatious  in  their  reticence.  Scoffing  allu- 
sions to  truths  the  most  sacred  abound  in  our  popular 
literature.  Young  men  think  it  a  sign  of  emancipation, 
and  of  intellectual  superiority,  to  throw  off  the  trammels 
of  the  creed  of  their  fathers.  Thousands  who  still  call 
themselves  Christians  seem  to  have  so  relegated  their 
Christianity  to  the  remoter  regions  of  their  being  that  it 
exercises  no  visible  influence  on  their  lives  and  motives. 
Large  English  constituencies,  with  their  eyes  open,  fully 
aware  of  all  the  facts  of  the  case,  return  as  their  represen- 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

tatives  to  Parliament,  deliberately  intrust  with  a  share  in 
framing  the  laws  of  a  Christian  nation,  men  who  deny  the 
existence  of  a  God.  We  pause,  and  ask  ourselves :  What  is 
coming?  Where  have  we  got  to?  Does  the  English  nation 
believe,  or  not  believe,  that  there  is  one  God?  In  the  face 
of  facts  so  startling,  and  so  significant,  can  we  say  to  any 
large  promiscuous  audience  of  a  nation  in  which  a  chance 
constituency  attaches  so  little  importance  to  the  most  rudi- 
mentary fraction  of  religious  faith, —  can  one  say  any  longer, 
Thou  believest  in  one  God?  The  Psalms  say,  "The  fool 
hath  said  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  God."  Have  the  days 
come  when  one  cannot  repeat  words,  which  we  treat  as 
sacred,  without  an  apology?  Have  the  days  come  in  which 
one  cannot  point  out. the  awful  peril  of  national  apostasy 
without  being  charged  with  political  meddling?  In  past 
times,  when  the  Creed  was  repeated,  the  nobles  of  Hungary 
used  to  rise,  and  draw  their  swords,  and  wave  them  in  the 
air  in  sign  that  for  that  faith  they  would,  if  need  be,  fight 
and  die.  Far,  far  are  we  removed  from  the  days  when  the 
northern  nations  laid  down  their  fury  at  the  feet  of  the 
white  Christ,  when  the  young  knights  swore  on  their  cross- 
hilted  swords  to  take  Christ  for  their  captain,  and  to  do 
their  duty  to  all  the  world!  I  will  not  believe  that  Eng- 
land will  range  herself  with  those  who  proclaim  that  God  is 
but  an  invention,  and  religion  a  fable,  and  immortality  a 
dream.  Now  that  the  stone,  hewn  without  hands,  has  grown 
into  a  mountain,  and  filled  the  whole  earth;  n'ow  that  Chris- 
tianity and  Christendom  exist  as  the  mighty  witness  of  his- 
tory to  the  truth  of  the  evangelists,  I  will  not  believe  that 
we  mean  to  roll  back  the  divine  progress  of  nineteen  hun- 
dred years.  But,  if  we  do,  I  know  that  it  is  not  religion 
which  is  in  danger,  but  we  that  are  in  danger.  No  jot  or 


ATHEISM.  !33 

tittle  shall  pass  away  from  the  words  of  Him  who  said, 
"Whosoever  shall  fall  upon  this  stone,  he  shall  be  broken; 
but  upon  whomsoever  it  shall  fall,  it  shall  grind  him  to 
powder." 

For  the  vast  majority  of  mankind  two  phenomena  have 
been  in  all  ages,  and  I  believe  will  be  to  the  end,  the  all- 
sufficient  proof  that  there  is  a  God.  One  is  the  Universe, 
the  other  is  the  Conscience.  One  is  the  starry  heaven 
above,  the  other  is  the  moral  law  within.  You  may  make 
men  defiant,  you  may  make  them  indifferent,  you  may 
drug  and  stupefy  their  intellects  by  the  fumes  of  their  own 
corrupt  pride,  you  may  bewitch  them  by  the  fatal  sorcery 
of  their  own  depraved  passions,  you  may  bribe  them  by  the 
hope  of  unlawful  gratifications,  you  may  drown  the  still, 
small  voice  of  religion  in  the  yelling  tumult  of  anarchy 
and  license;  but,  until  you  can  destroy  the  Universe,  and 
calcine  these  tablets  of  the  heart,  which  cannot  be  shat- 
tered like  the  tablets  of  Sinai,  and  whereon  God's  own 
finger  has  inscribed  His  own  law, —  till  you  can  do  this, 
which  will  never  be  until  the  sun  itself  has  burst  into 
destroying  conflagration,  I  take  it  that  you  will  not  make 
atheists  of  mankind.  "It  is  all  very  well;  but  who 
made  all  these?"  —so  asked  the  young  Napoleon,  raising 
his  hand  to  the  stars  of  midnight,  when,  on  the  deck  of  the 
vessel  which  was  bearing  him  to  Egypt,  the  French  savans 
had  proved  to  their  own  satisfaction  that  there  was  no  God. 
We  take  up  a  book, —  the  poems  of  Homer,  or  the  Vedas 
of  Hindostan, —  they  were  written  many  centuries  ago. 
The  hands  have  long  been  unmortised  from  the  wrists  of 
them  that  wrote  them,  and  they  themselves  have  become  but 
a  legend  or  a  name  or  not  even  a  name.  Yet  you  might 
as  well  try  to  persuade  us  that  the  material  constituents  of 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

those  books  —  vellum,  and  ink,  and  glue,  and  paper  —  had 
sprung  into  existence  by  the  accidental  conflux  of  chance 
atoms,  and  that  the  letters  had  danced  into  accidental 
agglomeration  and  shaped  themselves  into  philosophy  and 
song,  as  to  teach  us,  with  the  atheist,  that  the  sun,  and  the 
moon,  and  the  stars,  and  the  wide  seas,  and  the  everlasting 
hills,  the  air  we  breathe,  the  liquid  crystal  that  we  drink, 
the  blue  sky  over  our  heads,  and  the  white  clouds  which 
rest  upon  it,  the  trees  in  the  illimitable  forests  and  the 
birds  and  beasts  that  live  in  their  shadow,  and  man  with 
his  wide  thoughts  and  holy  prayers,  all  these  things  with 
all  their  beauty  and  beneficence,  with  all  the  pomp  and 
prodigality  of  their  wonder  and  their  power, —  that  all  these 
things  made  themselves,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing  in 
other  words,  that  they  were  the  work  of  eddying  atoms,  dead 
forces,  impersonal  laws.  Why,  from  the  great  sun  in  the 
heavens  to  the  little  wayside  flower,  freaked  with  crimson 
and  purple  or  adorned  with  the  delicate  network  of  tender 
lines;  from  the  star  Sirius,  rushing  from  us  into  unknown 
spaces,  down  to  the  tiny,  roseate  shell  upon  the  sands;  from 
the  galaxy  to  the  feather  of  a  bird,  the  stalk  of  a  wheat-ear, 
the  smallest  of  the  thirty-four  thousand  eyes  of  the  dragon- 
fly, the  whole  Universe  in  its  dread  magnificence  is  telling 
us,  in  language  voiceless,  but  never  ceasing,  of 

"  The  unambiguous  footsteps  of  a  God, 
Who  gives  its  lustre  to  the  insect's  wing, 
And  wheels  His  chariot  on  the  rolling  worlds." 

And  if  we  be  blind  to  these  sights,  deaf  to  these  voices, 
dull  and  dead  to  these  infinite  appeals,  if  our  every  out- 
ward sense  is  locked  up,  we  have  —  if  we  drown  it  not  —  a 
voice  within  us,  still  and  small,  yet  louder  than  the  thun- 


ATHEISM.  X35 

der.  To  every  good  and  true  man  Conscience  not  only  tells 
of  the  God  above  him,  but  of  the  God  within  him.  It  is 
the  categoric  imperative,  which  says  to  him  direct  from 
heaven,  "I  ought"  and  "I  must."  "It  is,"  as  Newman 
said,  "the  aboriginal  vicar  of  Christ,  a  prophet  in  its  in- 
formations, a  monarch  in  its  peremptoriness,  a  priest  in  its 
blessings  and  anathemas."  "It  is,"  as  Kant  called  it, 
"the  wondrous  power  which  works  neither  by  insinuation, 
flattery,  nor  threat,  but  merely  by  holding  up  the  naked  law 
in  the  soul  extorts  for  itself  reverence,  if  not  always  obe- 
dience, and  before  which,  however  secretly  they  may  rebel, 
all  appetites  are  dumb."  And  with  this  starry  heaven 
above  us,  and  this  moral  law  —  this  glow  of  the  eternal 
light,  this  mirror  of  the  divine  majesty — within  us,  I  say  that 
I  will  not  believe  that  England,  as  a  nation,  will  proclaim 
herself  blind  as  the  fool's  heart  to  the  light  of  heaven,  and 
deaf  as  the  adder's  ear  to  the  voice  of  God.  I  will  not 
believe  that  she  will  belie  in  degrading  apostasy  the  expe- 
riences of  the  world's  six  thousand  years,  or  abandon  the 
one  truth  which  has  been  the  blessing  and  safeguard  of  man- 
kind since  the  world's  gray  fathers  first  gazed  upon  the 
rainbow,  or  Abraham,  the  friend  of  God,  went  forth  from 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  to  establish  forever  among  idolatrous 
generations  the  truth  that  "it  is  the  Lord  that  ruleth  the 
heavens." 

"Thou  believest  in  God;  thou  doest  well:  the  de- 
mons also  believe,  and  shudder."  So,  with  tremendous 
and  crushing  irony,  exclaimed  St.  James.  He  meant  us 
to  see  that  there  are  beliefs,  and  beliefs,  and  that  the  exter- 
nal belief  of  rebellious  antipathy  and  shuddering  abhor- 
rence is  a  very  different  thing  from  the  loving,  trembling 
adoration  of  holy  and  faithful  souls.  There  can  be  nothing 


136  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

subordinate,  nothing  secondary,  in  this  belief.  It  is,  it 
must  be,  it  must  ultimately  become,  everything  or  nothing; 
for  the  belief  in  a  God  —  if  only  it  be  a  belief,  a  real  belief 
—  is  a  faith  so  awful  in  its  sanctions,  so  illimitable  in  its 
application,  that,  if  we  can  treat  it  as  a  secondary  matter, 
as  a  thing  of  no  great  importance,  as  a  thing  which  a  man 
can  wear  or  not  wear  like  an  article  of  dress, —  as  a  thing 
which  can  evaporate  at  the  church  door, —  our  hypocrisy  in 
this  matter  must  be  nothing  short  of  monstrous.  God  is 
not  "a  metaphysical  hypothesis,"  but  a  Living  God;  and, 
in  the  sense  that  He  cannot  accept  a  lukewarm  and 
divided  allegiance,  a  jealous  God, — "the  Lord,  the  Lord 
God,  merciful  and  gracious,  keeping  mercy  for  thousands, 
forgiving  iniquity  and  transgression  and  sin,  and  that  will 
by  no  means  clear  the  guilty." 

In  Him,  whether  we  will  it  or  no,  we  live  and  move,  and 
have  our  being.  This  transcendent  mystery  is  always 
about  us,  this  Eternal  Voice  ever  sounding  in  our  ears. 
He  is  a  besetting  God;  He  is  a  pervading  God.  If  we  go 
into  heaven,  He  is  there;  if  we  go  down  into  hell,  He  is 
there  also;  if  we  take  the  wings  of  the  morning,  and  fly 
into  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea,  even  there  shall  His 
hand  lead  us,  and  His  right  hand  shall  guide  us.  And  the 
belief  in  such  a  God  who  made  us,  and  not  we  ourselves,  who 
hideth  His  face,  and  we  are  troubled;  who  taketh  away  our 
breath,  and  we  die;  to  whom  darkness  is  as  the  light;  who 
searcheth  the  very  thoughts  of  the  heart;  who  will  require 
something  more  of  us  than  our  sleep  and  our  selfishness; 
whom  to  deny  is  as  though  a  sand-grain  would  set  itself  up 
against  the  Universe, —  allegiance  to  such  a  God  must  be 
something  more  than  a  tepid  assent  or  a  patronizing  ac- 
knowledgment, something  more  than  a  lip  service  or  a 


A  THEISM. 


137 


Sunday  fashion.  We  must  live  in  it,  and  die  in  it.  It 
must  be  a  sovereign  passion,  a  supreme  devotion.  Com- 
mon duties  must  be  transfused  by  it;  common  men  trans- 
figured; the  significance  of  common  deeds  expanded  to 
Infinitude.  It  is  a  thing  about  which  there  cannot  be  in- 
difference. It  is  not  a  matter  that  we  can  play  with  or 
patronize,  if  it  be  not  everything,  it  is  nothing.  There 
either  is  a  God  or  there  is  not  a  God;  and. you  must  decide 
which  you  believe.  It  is  not  a  question,  to-day,  between 
God  and  Baal.  I  do  not  say  to  you,  as  Elijah  said  to  apos- 
tate Israel:  "How  long  halt  ye  between  two  opinions?  If 
the  Lord  be  God,  follow  Him;  but  if  Baal,  then  follow 
him."  But  I  must  say  to  you,  On  which  side  are  you, — 
the  side  of  the  atheist  or  the  side  of  those  who  say,  "I  fear 
God"?  Every  nation,  every  tribe  on  the  whole  face  of  the 
earth,  that  has  had  the  least  germ  of  civilization,  or  even 
of  decency,  has  owned  some  sort  of  God;  no  nation  above 
the  most  bestial  and  the  most  abject  has  been  found  with- 
out some  object  of  worship.  Will  you  deface  the  records 
of  all  history?  Will  you  say  that  Judea,  and  Greece,  and 
Rome,  and  Europe,  and  Asia,  the  bright,  the  civilized,  the 
noble  races  of  the  world,  were  all  deceived,  and  that  the 
wisdom  which  ignored  the  Almighty  was  with  black  An- 
damanese  and  brutish  cannibals?  But  you  might  as  well 
quench  the  sun,  and  suppose  that  the  world  could  get  on 
without  light,  as  think  that  men  or  that  nations  can  do 
without  God.  Why,  from  this  belief  has  sprung  all  that  is 
greatest,  best,  most  glorious,  in  the  world's  history.  The 
divine  ideals  of  righteousness  and  of  holiness  have  had  no 
existence  apart  from  it.  It  has  been  as  the  dew  of  heaven, 
refreshing  every  withered  hope.  It  has  been  as  the  fire  of 
God,  rekindling  every  divine  enthusiasm.  It  has  been  to 


138  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

all  humanity  the  one  inalienable  element  of  life.  This  it 
was  which  sent  forth  the  Apostles  and  Evangelists  to  con- 
vert the  world.  This  it  was  which  made  the  Church  of  our 
fathers  the  defender  of  the  poor.  This  it  was  which  tamed 
the  wild  flood  of  northern  barbarians  into  the  Christendom 
of  Europe.  This  it  was  which  made  childhood  sacred,  and 
ennobled  womanhood,  and  turned  poverty  into  a  beatitude. 
This  it  was  which  founded  the  greatness  of  England,  and 
led  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  to  America,  and  proclaimed  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  and  broke  the  tyrant,  and  emanci- 
pated the  slave.  Mercy,  and  equal  justice,  and  tenderness, 
and  inflexible  truth,  and  noble  purity, —  all  that  makes  life 
sacred,  and  uplifts  it  into  holy  self-control;  all  that  saves 
men  from  sinking  into  natural  brute  beasts,  speaking  evil 
of  things  which  they  know  not,  and  corrupting  themselves 
in  the  things  which  they  naturally  know, —  has  sprung,  and 
sprung  solely,  from  their  belief  in  God.  You  might  as 
well  tell  me  that  the  Indian  rivers  would  still  flow  in  their 
majestic  volume,  to  fertilize  the  plain,  if  no  snows  fell  on 
the  Himalayan  heights,  as  tell  me  that  morality,  every  form 
of  morality, —  purity,  truth,  honor,  soberness, —  would  not 
suffer  if  atheism  prevailed.  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that 
if  England  gave  up  her  faith  for  no  faith,  gave  up  her  God 
for  no  God,  overthrew  her  altars,  tore  up  her  Bible,  denied 
her  Christ,  turned  her  churches  into  infidel  lecture  halls, — 
do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  if  England  comes  to  believe 
that  men  are  bodies  without  souls,  that  we  only  are  what 
we  eat,  that  God  is  a  fiction,  that  the  commandments  are 
a  result  of  disputable  experience,  that  the  death  of  the  body 
ends  our  being, —  that  if  you  thus  remove  from  morals  all 
their  divine  sanctions,  and  rob  them  of  all  their  inspiring 
hopes,  if  you  thus  rob  the  future  of  its  immortality  and 


A  THEISM. 


139 


empty  heaven  of  its  God, — do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  with- 
out God,  and  without  hope,  men  will  still  be  gentle,  and 
humble,  and  pure,  and  good?  I  tell  you  on  the  evidence  of 
all  history  that  the  stream  of  morals  would  dry  up;  that  men 
would  become  sensual  egotists,  that  man's  vile  motto  would 
be,  Each  for  himself;  that  interest  would  become  lord 
cf  all ;  and  that  the  mass  of  bad  and  of  average  men,  who 
now  are  only  restrained  at  all  by  the  general  .faith  of 
Christendom,  and  that  which  lingers  like  an  echo  and  a 
reminiscence,  in  their  own  hearts,  would  become  what 
the  apostle  prophesied  they  would  become,  scoffers  walking 
after  their  own  hearts'  lusts,  covetous,  boasters,  proud,  blas- 
phemers, disobedient  to  parents,  unthankful,  unholy,  with- 
out natural  affection,  perjurers,  false  accusers,  incontinent, 
fierce,  despisers  of  those  that  are  good,  traitors,  heady,  high- 
minded,  lovers  of  pleasure  more  than  lovers  of  God :  —  that 
is  what  they  would  become.  Those  words  were  used  by  the 
apostle  concerning  men  who  had  a  form  of  godliness,  but 
denied  the  power  thereof.  What,  then,  would  become  of 
those  who  had  not  even  the  form?  Read  the  first  chapter 
of  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  and  you  will  see.  You 
will  see  there  the  moral  picture  of  an  age  which  had  not  been 
guilty  of  the  crime,  the  last,  worst  crime,  of  apostatizing 
from  Christianity  into  atheism:  —  that  is,  of  turning  from 
the  best  to  the  worst,  of  deliberately  loving  darkness  rather 
than  light  because  their  deeds  are  evil,  of  counting  the 
blood  of  the  covenant  wherewith  they  were  redeemed  an 
unholy  thing,  of  crucifying  to  themselves  the  Son  of  God 
afresh,  and  putting  Him  to  an  open  shame.  No;  but  of  the 
far  less  heinous  crime  of  turning  only  from  Paganism,  and 
from  natural  religion;  of  denying  the  testimony  of  their 
conscience  only,  and  not  seeing  the  Invisible  in  the  visi- 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

ble.  And  what  was  the  issue  of  even  that  lesser  apostasy? 
It  was  an  issue  as  historically  certain  as  it  was  logically 
inevitable.  It  was  a  universal  degradation.  It  is  not  only 
St.  Paul  who  will  tell  you;  but  Tacitus  will  tell  you,  Sue- 
tonius will  tell  you,  Martial  and  Juvenal  will  tell  you,— 
their  own  poets,  their  own  historians, —  that  theirs  was  the 
vain  imagination,  the  darkened  heart,  the  debasing,  degrad- 
ing, unnatural  filthiness  of  vile  affections.  Their  professed 
wisdom  became  .glaring  folly.  Because  they  refused  God, 
God  gave  them  up  to  a  refuse  mind,  which  revelled  in  the 
uncleannesses  which  they  loved.  They  called  right  wrong, 
and  good  evil.  It  is  not  St.  Paul  only  who  seizes  that  god- 
less age  by  the  hair,  and  brands  upon  its  leprous  forehead 
the  stigma  of  its  shame.  Carved  on  its  own  gems,  painted 
on  its  own  walls,  stamped  upon  its  own  coins,  written  in 
putrid  stains  on  its  own  abhorrent  literature,  you  may 
read  the  confession  that  they  were  filled  with  unrighteous- 
ness, fornication,  wickedness,  covetousness,  full  of  envy, 
debate,  deceit,  malignity,  whisperers,  backbiters,  haters  of 
God,  despiteful,  proud,  boasters,  inventors  of  evil  things, 
who,  knowing  the  judgment  of  God  that  they  who  do  such 
things  are  worthy  of  death,  not  only  do  the  same,  but  have 
pleasure  in  them  that  do  them.  For  nations  there  can  be 
no  morality  if  they  own  no  God.  "In  a  brief,  tormented 
existence  ungoverned  by  any  law  save  sensation  and  the 
appetites,"  the  answer  of  a  world  deprived  of  a  holy  ideal 
will  always  be  summed  up  in  two  words, —  heartless  cru- 
elty, unfathomable  corruption. 

I  say  that  any  nation  which  denies  God  becomes  by 
an  invariable  law  an  infamous  nation,  and  any  age  which 
denies  God  an  abominable  age.  History,  alas!  does  not 
lack  examples  to  emphasize  the  warning.  We  have  seen 


A  THEISM. 


141 


what  the  last  Pagan  century  was :  let  us  see  what  the  fifi 
teenth  Christian  century  was.  That,  too,  was  an  atheistic 
century.  It  seems  to  be  the  characteristic  of  such  ages 
that  they  should  be  glittering  and  corrupt,  clothed  like  the 
blaspheming  Herod  in  tissue  of  silver,  but  within  eaten  of 
worms.  Christianity  had  ceased  to  be  Christian.  Priests, 
turned  atheists,  made  an  open  scoff  at  the  religion  they 
professed.  The  world  was  filled  with  pride,  greed,  and  pol- 
lution. There  is  not  a  single  historian  of  that  period  who 
does  not  admit  that  a  fearful  moral  retrogression  followed 
on  the  overthrow  of  faith.  As  the  Emperors  of  the  first 
century  were  a  Nero  and  a  Caligula,  and  its  writers  a  Pe- 
tronius  and  a  Martial,  so  the  Pope  of  the  fifteenth  century 
was  a  Borgia,  and  its  writers  an  Aretino  and  a  Berni. 
Take  another  century  in  which  unbelief  was  predominant, 
the  eighteenth  century.  In  the  chambers  of  St.  Louis  a 
king  debased  the  very  ideal  of  manhood  in  the  Pare  aux 
Cerfs.  In  Russia  reigned  Catherine  II., — 

"  That  foul  woman  of  the  north, 
The  lustful  murderess  of  her  wedded  lord." 

In  Saxony  an  Augustus  the  Strong  filled  with  his  shame- 
lessness  the  trumpet  of  infamy.  In  Prussia  a  Frederic  II. 
made  his  court  the  propaganda  of  infidelity.  In  England 
—  alas!  even  in  England  —  we  had  a  grossly  tainted  litera- 
ture; a  corrupt  society;  gambling,  drinking,  all  but  univer- 
sal profligacy,  and  the  election  to  Parliament  of  a  man — John 
Wilkes  —  who  had  written  an  infamous  book,  and  taken  part 
in  the  blasphemous  orgies  of  Medmenham  Abbey.  Eng- 
land was  saved  by  the  religious  revival;  but  for  Europe  that 
epoch  ended  in  the  thunder-clap  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Among  those  frivolous  and  atheistic  kings,  "a  people,  which 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

had  followed  in  the  wake  of  their  corruption  to  feed  upon 
its  offal,  flung  the  head  of  a  king  shorn  off  by  the  ignoble 
axe  of  a  machine."  The  boast  of  liberty  ended  in  the 
Reign  of  Terror;  the  boast  of  humanity  in  a  Paris  drunk 
with  blood;  the  boast  of  virtue  in  the  desecration  of 
churches  by  blasphemous  obscenity,  and  the  worship  of  a 
harlot  on  the  polluted  altars  of  Notre  Dame! 

Nor  are  our  warnings  a  century  old.  The  Scripture 
says  that,  when  God's  judgments  are  in  the  world,  then  will 
the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  learn  wisdom.  Were  they  not 
abroad  in  France  ten  years  ago,  when  her  glory  melted 
away  like  a  vision  of  the  Apocalypse,  and  like  the  corpse 
of  some  exhumed  king  her  strength  slipped  into  ashes  at  a 
touch?  Whom  shall  I  summon  as  witnesses  of  this?  Not 
bishops,  not  clergymen.  I  will  summon  a  sceptic,  M. 
Renan.  He  says  that  the  cause  of  that  awful  collapse  lay 
in  a  press  filled  with  mean  buffooneries,  in  puerile  vanity, 
in  a  vulgar  cynicism  which  sneers  at  all  faith  and  all  virtue, 
in  a  total  lack  of  the  chastity  which  makes  nations  strong. 
I  will  summon  another  Frenchman,  an  opera  writer,  M. 
Alexandre  Dumas,  the  younger.  "Tainted,"  he  says,  "all 
of  us  in  the  depths  of  our  hearts,  we  must  disengage  our- 
selves from  our  habits  and  conventions  of  yesterday  to  re- 
ascend  to  the  primitive  sources  of  humanity,  and  ask  our- 
selves simply  and  resolutely :  Is  it  right,  Yes  or  No,  that 
there  should  be  a  God,  a  morality,  a  society,  a  family? 
Ought  woman  to  be  respected?  Ought  man  to  toil?  Is  the 
good  absolute?  Yes!  Yes!  a  thousand-fold  Yes!  And 
societies,  governments,  families,  individuals,  can  they,  if 
they  would  be  noble,  durable,  fruitful,  do  without  these  con- 
ditions? No!  No!  a  thousand  times  No!  "  I  will  summon 
another  French  novelist,  M.  Alphonse  Karr.  He  describes 


A  THEISM. 


143 


the  youth  of  unbelieving  France  as  having  lost  their  youth 
in  a  precocity  of  vice  and  presumption,  and  as  employing 
the  first  decades  of  life  in  longing  for  the  second,  and  the 
second  decades  of  life  in  regretting  the  first.  He  adds,  "If 
we  shake  down  the  blossom  of  the  tree  when  it  is  in  flower, 
if  we  pluck  prematurely  the  fragrant  snow  which  crowns 
it  in  the  spring  as  with  a  bridal  garland,  who  can  expect 
the  summer  fruit?"* 

Will  these  results  encourage  England,  too,  to  enter  on 
the  path  of  Atheism?  If  she  does,  let  her  not  be  deceived 
by  the  notion  that  culture  will  save  her,  or  civilization 
will  save  her,  from  the  flood  of  vices  which -will  grow 
darker  and  darker  till  the  pit  swallows  them.  They  did 
not  save  the  first  century,  or  the  fifteenth,  or  the  eigh- 
teenth. What  should  save  her  if  she  professes  the  neu- 
trality of  ignorance  between  the  faith  which  produced  a 
Howard  and  a  Wilberforce  and  the  atheism  which  produced 
the  Renaissance  murderers  and  the  French  dynamitards? 
Does  England  want  her  journalists  to  become  like  Marat? 
her  statesmen  to  become  like  Collot  d'Herbois?  her  poli- 
tics to  become  an  anarchy  of  socialism  like  the  Commune 
which  burned  and  murdered  in  1872,  or  the  lustful  and 
sanguinary  orgies  which  made  its  toy  of  the  guillotine 
in  1793?  Does  she  want  her  youth  to  have  no  dignity  of 
manhood,  no  reverence  for  womanhood,  to  be  strong  only 
in  blasphemies  against  God  and  basenesses  towards  men? 
If  she  choose  infidelity  for  her  portion,  what  is  to  save 

*The  following  appeared  in  the  Times  March  20 :  — 

"  Yesterday  being  the  anniversary  of  the  Commune,  twenty-two  banquets  were  held  in 
Paris  and  its  suburbs,  with  an  aggregate  of  four  thousand  attendants.  Louise  Michel  harangued 
at  three  of  them  on  the  glory  of  the  martyrs  of  1871,  the  impending  collapse  of  a  rotten  society, 
the  terror  of  the  middle  classes,  and  the  approach  of  vengeance  :  — 

'"We  shall  be  merciless;  we  shall  not  limit  the  number  of  victims;  we  shall  cleave 
abysses.  We  have  been  styled  pe"troleurs,  we  shall  again  be  incendiaries,  and  we  shall  think 
nothing  of  burning  down  a  city  ! '  " 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

her?  "Culture,  without  religious  consciousness,  is  noth- 
ing but  civilized  barbarity,  and  disguised  animalism."  So 
said  Bunsen ;  and,  if  you  do  not  care  for  the  testimony  of  a 
Christian  statesman,  will  you  accept  that  of  the  republican 
Mazzini,  of  the  philosopher  Goethe?  "All  epochs,"  says 
Goethe,  "in  which  faith  has  prevailed,  have  been  brilliant, 
heart -elevating,  and  fruitful  both  to  contemporaries  and  to 
prosperity.  All  epochs,  on  the  contrary,  in  which  unbelief, 
under  whatever  form,  has  maintained  a  sad  supremacy,  even 
if  they  glitter  for  a  moment  with  a  false  splendour,  vanish 
from  the  memory  because  they  have  been  barren."  "Times 
which  have  ceased,"  says  Mazzini,  "to  believe  in  God  and 
in  immortality  may  continue  illogically  to  utter  the  holy 
words  'progress'  and  'duty';  but  they  have  deprived  the 
first  of  its  basis,  and  the  second  of  its  source." 

Let  me  conclude  this  large  and  perilously  important  sub- 
ject by  one  or  two  remarks.  I  am  not  speaking,  I  am  not 
thinking,  of  individuals.  To  them  I  would  show  all  cour- 
tesy, all  consideration,  all  justice.  I  speak  in  warning  to 
the  nation.  I  am  speaking  of  atheist  ages,  not  of  atheist 
individuals.  The  number  of  avowed  atheists  who  have* 
risen  to  any  notoriety  in  this  world  has  been  but  small,  and 
there  is  scarcely  one  of  them  who  is  inscribed  on  the  roll 
of  the  world's  benefactors.  Not  a  few  of  them  have  lived 
lives  which,  if  imitated,  would  in  one  generation  be  fatal 
to  the  world.  But  God  forbid  that  every  individual  atheist 
should  be  immoral !  It  is  not  so.  There  are  some  who  have 
served  God,  though  they  have  not  known  Him;  some  who, 
though  speculative  infidels,  have  been  practical  Christians. 
I  cannot  now  pause  to  explain  how  or  why  this  has  been  so 
in  the  case  of  a  few.  But  it  never  has  been  so,  and  never 
can  be  so  with  an  atheist  nation  or  an  atheist  age.  Such 


A  THEISM. 


145 


a  nation,  such  an  age,  may  continue  for  a  time  to  kindle  its 
dim  torches  at  that  fount  of  light  which  it  has  denied,  but 
they  soon  die  out  in  smouldering  fume.  It  may  walk  for 
a  year  or  two  in  the  dubious  twilight  left  upon  the  western 
hill-tops  when  the  sun  has  set,  but  the  twilight  soon  rushes 
into  the  deep,  dark  night.  When  God  is  denied,  when 
faith  is  quenched,  when  prayer  has  ceased,  it  is  never  long 
before  the  holy  warfare  of  ideas  is  abandoned  for  the  base 
conflict  of  interests;  never  long  before  hatred  and  envy 
usurp  the  place  of  charity,  and  lust  the  place  of  love.  For 
a  time  an  atheist  populace  may  uphold  "the  tattered  banner 
of  corpse-like  traditions  which  it  has  stolen  from  the  rifled 
grave  of  Christianity,"  but  it  will  never  be  long  before  it 
declares  itself  the  enemy  of  the  Church,  the  enemy  of  the 
family,  the  enemy  of  the  throne;  never  long  before  it  tears 
down  the  flag  of  decency  and  order,  and  uphoists  in  its 
place,  if  not  the  red  flag  of  socialism,  the  black  flag  of  spoli- 
ation, yet  certainly  the  foul  standard  of  material  appetites 
and  sensual  desires.  Let  the  mass  of  the  English  working 
classes  once  adopt  atheistic  principles,  and  I  would  not 
give  five  years'  purchase  for  England's  happiness  or  Eng- 
land's fame.  She  would  become  an  astonishment  and  a 
hissing,  a  land  of  terror  and  of  shame. 

Shall  it  ever  be  so?  France  has  deliberately  erased  the 
name  of  God  from  the  curriculum  of  her  public. education. 
Shall  we  ever  follow  in  that  bad  path?  May  God  forbid! 
Here,  at  any  rate,  at  this  centre  of  England's  national  his- 
tory, we  may  dare  to  hope,  in  spite  of  all  signs  and  omens, 
that  her  sons  will  not  pass  out  of  the  noonday  into  the  mid- 
night; will  not  abandon  the  cathedral  for  the  charnel-house; 
will  not  thus  apostatize  from  all  that  has  made  her  greatest, 
from  all  for  which  her  fathers  have  lavished  their  treasures 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE   DAY. 

and  shed  their  blood.  For  what  has  England  loved  and 
honored  hitherto?  Has  she  not  loved  her  God  and  Saviour? 
Answer  me,  shade  of  Edward  the  Confessor!  Answer  me, 
hero  of  Agincourt,  whose  last  words  were  a  humble  prayer! 
Answer  me,  all  noble  men,  all  saintly  women,  who  have 
gone  to  rest!  Has  she  not  loved  her  throne?  Answer  me, 
soldiers,  and  patriots,  and  statesmen!  Answer  me  from 
your  graves,  Chatham,  and  Pitt,  and  Fox,  and  Canning, 
and  Mansfield,  and  Palmerston!  Has  she  not  loved  her 
Bible?  Answer  me,  ye  who  broke  the  fetters  of  the  slave, 
Wilberforce,  and  Macaulay,  and  Buxton,  and  Granville 
Sharp;  and  Livingstone,  who  spent  his  life  in  duty;  and 
Lawrence,  who  feared  man  so  little  because  he  feared  God 
so  much!  Not  in  Westminster  Abbey,  not  with  the  tombs 
and  memorials  of  the  sainted  dead,  who  based  all  the 
grandeur  and  all  the  glory  of  England  on  the  awful  holiness 
of  the  altar  and  the  inviolable  sanctity  of  the  domestic 
hearth, —  will  I  doubt  that,  in  spite  of  torpid  indifference, 
in  spite  of  our  unworthiness,  in  spite  of  the  seducing  tones 
in  which  atheism  appeals  to  the  pride  and  to  the  passions 
of  mankind,  England  will  remain  true  to  her  God,  faithful 
to  her  Scriptures,  loyal  to  her  throne.  Surely,  to  doubt  it 
were  well-nigh  to  make  the  crusaders  start  from  their  marble 
tombs.  But  I  will  tell  you  how  to  avert  the  possibility  of 
that  day,  how  to  keep  England  true  to  her  Church,  and  to 
her  faith.  It  is  this :  Live  as  Christians,  as  true  Christians. 
Live  as  men  who  do  verily  believe  that  Christianity  is  not 
only  a  doctrine,  but  a  life.  The  sword  of  England's  power 
may  be  blunted,  but,  if  she  be  innocent,  the  silver  shield  of 
her  innocence  can  never  be  pierced.  Her  one  unconquera- 
ble source  of  strength  has  ever  been  the  faithfulness  of  her 
sons.  Live  as  her  faithful  sons,  and  the  floods  of  advanc- 


A  THEISM. 


147 


ing  atheism  shall  ebb  away  like  a  broken  wave,  dashed  on 
the  rock  of  Christ  into  spray  upon  the  mist,  driven  into 
foul  scum  and  empty  bubbles  upon  the  shore.  Live  the 
Christian  life,  believe  in  God  not  as  demons  which  shudder 
but  as  sons  who  love,  and  then  you  may  smile  when  French 
savans  and  German  scientists  tell  you  that  Christianity  is 
dead.  Christianity  dead!  When  once  Christianity  is  dead, 
the  world  will  be  twice  dead,  a  wandering  star  to  which  is 
reserved  the  blackness  of  darkness  forever.  But  lift  your 
eyes,  lift  holy  hands  to  the  God  who  made  you,  and  Chris- 
tianity shall  never  die.  It  shall  grow  younger  with  years. 
It  shall  deepen  in  faith  and  wisdom,  in  dominion  and  power, 
in  purity  and  peace.  The  dew  of  her  birth  shall  be  of  the 
womb  of  the  morning;  and  they  who  believe  and  live  in 
her,  shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament,  and  as 
the  stars  for  ever  and  ever. 


HISTORY. 

"  The  God  that  made  the  world  .  . .  made  of  one  every  nation  of  men,  having 
determined  their  appointed  seasons;  that  they  should  seek  God,  if  haply  they 
might  feel  after  Him,  and  find  Him." — ACTS  xvii.  24,  26,  27. 

IT  seems  to  me  of  special  importance  in  days  of  increasing 
doubt  to  point  out  the  many  voices  in  which  God  speaks  to 
us.  The  great  lessons  in  His  sacred  Book  do  not  stand 
alone.  They  are  illustrated  and  re-enforced  by  His  lessons 
in  other  and  widely  different  books.  There  is  another 
teacher  of  mankind, —  History.  History  means  God  as 
manifested  in  His  dealings  with  the  race  of  man.  But  let 
me  from  the  first  entreat  you  to  believe  that  now  and  always 
it  will  be  my  desire  to  teach  God's  grace,  that  it  may  help 
us  to  be  better  men,  and,  therefore,  also  better  citizens, — 
"profitable  members  of  the  Church  and  Commonwealth,  and 
hereafter  partakers  of  the  immortal  glory  of  the  Resurrec- 
tion." 

And  where,  let  me  ask,  could  History  be  more  fitly 
spoken  of  as  a  source  of  divine  teaching  than  at  Westmin- 
ster Abbey,  which  is  the  most  historic  church  in  all  the 
world?  There,  at  the  very  centre  of  the  history  of  the  Eng- 
lish people,  a  history  as  sacred  and  as  instructive  as  any 
which  Scripture  tells,  for  eleven  centuries  at  least  have  our 
annals  been  more  or  less  closely  connected  with  the  sacred- 
ness  of  this  spot.  No  building  in  the  world  —  not  St. 
Peter's  at  Rome,  not  the  cathedrals  of  Florence,  or  Milan, 
or  Rheims,  not  the  Kremlin  at  Moscow,  not  the  Escorial 
of  Spain,  not  the  Kaaba  at  Mecca  —  can  show  us  such  a  sue- 


HISTORY. 


149 


cession  of  historic  scenes,  so  rich  in  interest  and  pathos. 
Nowhere  "has  human  sympathy  been  poured  forth  in  such 
torrents,  in  ways  so  great  and  various,  and  over  so  vast  an 
epoch  of  time."  In  yonder  chapel  lie  the  bones  of  the 
saintly  Confessor;  there  is 

"  The  base,  foul  stone,  made  precious  by  the  foil 
Of  England's  chair  " ; 

there,  too,  are  the  tombs  of  kings  and  queens  which  were 
venerable  when  Shakspere  wrote.  Let  us  enter  this  hal- 
lowed place.  Yonder  is  the  helmet  that  gleamed  at  Agin- 
court,  and  the  sword  that  conquered  France.  There  is 
the  first  contemporary  portrait  of  any  English  sovereign, 
of  Richard  II.,  baptized,  crowned,  wedded,  buried,  in  this 
Abbey,  and  in  part  its  builder.  On  the  walls  of  yonder 
aisle  are  the  sculptured  shields  of  Barbarossa,  of  St.  Louis, 
of  Simon  de  Montfort.  On  yonder  spot  has  every  English 
sovereign  of  England  been  crowned.  There  Plantagenets 
and  Tudors  were  anointed;  there  sat,  clothed  in  white  satin, 
the  king  whose  head  fell  on  the  scaffold;  there  the  weight 
of  the  crown  left  a  red  scar  on  the  forehead  of  Queen  Anne; 
there,  fifty  years  ago,  sat  the  young  girl  who  since  then  has 
reigned  longer  than  any  king  except  Henry  III.  and  George 
III.,  and,  by  God's  blessing,  far  more  happily  than 
they.  Your  feet  are  on  an  empire's  dust.  On  all  sides 
are  the  memorials  of  the  statesmen,  the  soldiers,  the 
sailors,  the  musicians,  the  poets,  the  orators,  who  have 
made  this  nation  great,  and  kept  it  so.  All  this  magnifi- 
cent pageant,  starting,  as  it  were,  into  life  from  the  con- 
secrated dust  around  us, —  does  it  mean  nothing?  Is  it 
only  a  confused  phantasmagoria  of  meaningless  shadows? 
God  forbid ! 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

You  might  say,  perhaps,  that  History  is  a  phenomenon 
so  vast,  so  complicated,  that  we  can  make  nothing  of 
it;  that  our  knowledge  of  it  is,  at  the  best,  quite  fragmen- 
tary; and  that  even  of  that  very  partial  knowledge  much  is 
imperfect  and  much  uncertain.  There  are  whole  nations, 
whole  races,  whole  dynasties  of  kings,  over  whom  "the 
iniquity  of  oblivion  has  blindly  scattered  her  poppy." 
"What  is  History,"  asked  Napoleon  I.,  "but  a  fiction 
agreed  upon?"  "Don't  read  me  History,"  said  Sir 
Robert  Walpole,  for  twenty-one  years  Prime  Minister  of 
England,  "for  I  know  that  that  can't  be  true."  The  an- 
swer to  such  remarks  is  that  History  may  be  uncertain  in 
thousands  of  minor  details,  but  it  is  not  uncertain  in  its 
wider  issues.  History  is  like  a  battle.  It  sways  to  and 
fro,  and  is  full  of  shocks  and  flank  movements,  retreats  and 
advances,  rout  and  resistance,  utterly  confusing  to  those 
who. take  part  in  it.  Nevertheless,  we  know  in  the  evening 
which  side  has  lost  or  won.  It  is  like  the  sea  upon  the 
shore.  You  can  scarcely  tell  at  first  what  each  wave  is 
doing;  but  wait  for  a  few  moments,  and  you  will  not  fail  to 
recognize  whether  the  tide  be  in  ebb  or  flow.  So  is  it  with 
the  annals  of  mankind.  We  are  each  of  us  units  in  an 
immense  procession  passing  for  a  brief  moment  between 
the  darkness  of  birth  and  the  darkness  of  the  grave.  We 
do  but  emerge  for  one  gleaming  instant  between  the  two 
eternities,  on  our  way  from  God  to  God;  but  as  surely  as 
the  changes  of  this  planet  are  chronicled  upon  its  tablets 
of  rock,  so  surely  does  each  generation  leave  behind  it  the 
traces  of  its  thoughts,  and  words,  and  deeds.  And  these, 
too,  are  "written  for  our  learning."  Much  of  the  Bible  is 
a  History,  and  all  History  is  a  Bible. 

Of  many  attempts  to  read  aright  the  meaning  of  His- 


HISTORY.  i$i 

tory,  some  have  naturally  been  partial  or  erroneous;  and  of 
these  I  may  notice  two. 

Fifteen  hundred  years  ago,  when  the  flood  of  barbarian 
nations  was  surging  round  the  empire,  and  had  burst  even 
upon  the  gates  of  Rome,  there  lived  a  great  Father  of  the 
Church,  who  was  bishop  of  the  African  town  of  Hippo.  3 
The  Vandals  had  been  introduced  into  Africa  by  Count 
Boniface.  They  had  sacked  Carthage,  and  were  besieging 
the  town  of  which  Augustine  was  bishop.  To  a  despond- 
ent mind  it  might  well  have  seemed  as  though  Christianity 
itself  had  failed,  as  though  the  cross  would  be  overborne 
by  floods  of  heresy  or  heathenism;  nay,  even  as  if,  in  the 
wreck  of  civilization  and  all  social  institutions,  the  end  of 
the  world  had  come.  But  the  faith  of  Augustine  was  not 
shaken.  He  wrote  his  famous  "City  of  God,"  to  prove, 
even  in  those  gloomy  times,  that  "the  world  and  man  are 
governed  by  a  divine  Providence."  But  he  looked  upon 
mankind  as  falling  into  two  irreconcilably  hostile  camps, 
the  City  of  God,  the  City  of  Satan, —  the  one  destined  to  end- 
less glory  and  victory,  the  other  mere  fuel  for  the  flame. 
The  view  is  but  one-sided.  With  far  larger  insight  and 
loftier  philosophy  had  St.  Paul  taught  the  philosophers  of 
Athens  that  God  hath  made  of  one  all  nations,  and  ap- 
pointed to  each  their  times,  and  made  them  all  His  com- 
mon care.  The  lines  drawn  by  Augustine  were  too  hard 
and  fast.  He  held  the  narrow,  unscriptural  maxim  that 
"outside  the  Church  there  is  no  salvation."  He  saw  that 
in  mankind  there  is  a  solidarity  of  guilt:  he  failed  to  see 
that  there  is  also  a  solidarity  of  redemption.  The  history 
of  the  nations  is  not  the  mere  story  of  a  handful  saved  from 
universal  deluge,  any  more  than  it  is  the  chaos  of  madness, 
the  tissue  of  absurdities,  which  Goethe  saw  in  it.  God  is 


1 1;  2  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

not  the  Father  of  the  elect  only,  but  the  Father  of  whom 
all  fatherhood  is  named.  The  Saviour  of  mankind  said  to 
his  apostles,  "I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all  men  unto 
me."  Our  prayer  is  "that  it  may  please  Thee  to  have  mercy 
upon  all  men,"  and  "God  willeth  all  men  to  be  saved." 

Again,  if  Augustine,  perhaps  still  unconsciously  in- 
fluenced by  the  deep-seated  Manichaeism  of  his  earlier  days, 
saw  in  mankind  only  an  elect  few  and  a  ruined  multitude, 
a  cynical  and  stormy  gospel  of  modern  days  looks  on  man- 
kind as  only  noticeable  for  the  sake  of  its  great  men.  This 
was  the  teaching  of  Carlyle.  "Two  hundred  thousand 
men,"  said  Napoleon  to  Prince  Metternich, —  "what  are  two 
hundred  thousand  men  to  me?  "  This  view  is  not  only 
false:  it  is  also  ignoble  and  fatal.  Great  men  are  but  the 
children  of  their  time,  influenced  by  the  spirit  of  millions 
of  their  unknown  contemporaries.  The  multitude  are  not 
mere  ciphers,  the  counters  of  the  tyrant,  the  despot's  slaves. 
The  work  of  God  in  History  is  not  to  elevate  this  or  that 
man  like  a  colossus,  and  leave  all  the  rest  to  peep  about  for 
dishonorable  graves :  it  is  to  bless  and  ennoble  the  whole 
family  of  man.  "Mankind  has  but  one  single  object, 
mankind  itself;  and  that  object  has  but  one  single  instru- 
ment, mankind  again."  Alone  of  all  religions  the  Gospel, 
which  has  given  to  mankind  a  nobler  destiny  than  to  be 
the  footstool  of  a  few,  is  infinitely  tender  to  the  individual 
also.  He  who  has  made  "all  nations"  is  not  far  from 
"every  one  of  us."  God  does  not  care,  Christ  did  not  die, 
for  great  men  only.  Their  greatness  may  be  no  greatness 
at  all  to  God.  We  weigh  men  by  the  dust-grains  of  rank, 
or  measure  by  the  molehill  altitudes  of  human  distinction. 
He,  weighing  in  the  balances  of  the  sanctuary  the  eternal 
differences  of  holiness  and  vice,  calls  not  many  rich,  not 


HISTORY, 


153 


many  mighty,  not  many  noble.  '"He  putteth  down  the 
mighty  from  their  seat,  and  exalteth  the  humble  and  meek." 
God  cares,  then,  for  all  mankind.  He  cares  for  each 
individual  man.  What  lessons  may  all  nations,  what  les- 
sons may  England,  what  lessons  may  each  man,  learn  from 
God's  dealings  with  them,  as  recorded  in  the  history  of 
mankind?  We  may  learn,  first,  the  refutation  of  the  fool 
when  he  hath  said  in  his  heart,  "There  is  no  God."  The 
blind  man  might  as  well  assert  that  there  is  no  sun.  All 
History,  all  Scripture,  all  Nature,  all  experience,  refute 
him.  How  can  any  man  of  ordinary  intelligence  study 
History,  and  not  see  and  hear  God  in  it,  whether  in  the 
hurricane,  in  the  fire,  in  the  earthquake,  or  in  the  still,  small 
voice?  When  Frederic  William  of  Prussia  ordered  his 
chaplain  to  prove  in  one  sentence  the  truth  of  religion,  he 
answered, —  and  the  answer  is  full  of  meaning, —  "  The  Jews, 
your  Majesty";  but  God  was  not  more  in  the  history  of 
ancient  Palestine  than  in  that  of  modern  Europe.  Take 
but  a  single  proof,  which  was  alone  sufficient  to  convince 
the  great  German  historian,  Julius  Muller.  Nearly  nine- 
teen centuries  ago,  in  the  most  despised  village,  of  the 
most  despised  province,  of  a  most  despised  and  conquered 
nation,  lived  One  who  said  to  His  few  disciples,  "I  am  the 
Son  of  God."  For  thirty  years,  for  nearly  His  whole  life, 
He  was  the  carpenter  of  Nazareth.  For  three  years  only 
He  lived  and  taught,  mostly  in  poor  and  narrow  Galilee; 
and  for  one  of  those  years  at  least  He  was  a  hunted  fugitive 
in  half-heathen  places,  with  a  price  upon  His  head.  Priests 
and  Pharisees,  the  nobles  and  the  masses,  Jews  and  Gen- 
tiles, combined  to  slander,  to  scourge,  to  buffet,  at  last  to 
put  Him  to  a  death  of  shame.  He  left  but  an  obscure 
handful  of  frightened  Galilean  followers.  Is  any  man  so 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

senseless  as  to  believe  that,  without  the  manifest  aid  of 
God,  those  few,  poor,  ignorant,  provincial  peasants  could 
have  imposed  on  the  scornful  and  majestic  world  the  endless 
adoration  of  one  who  had  been  crucified  by  a  Roman  official 
as  a  Jewish  malefactor?  A  paltry  band  of  fishermen  and 
publicans, —  all  the  intellect,  all  the  culture,  all  the  religion 
of  the  world,  against  them!  Rank  spat  on  them.  Intellect 
disdained  them.  The  mob  roared  to  fling  them  to  the 
lions.  The  swords  of  thirty  legions  were  bared  to  smite 
them  to  the  dust.  Without  art,  without  science,  without 
force  or  wealth,  their  faith  grovelled  and  smouldered  for 
two  centuries  among  slaves  and  artisans,  and  more  than 
one  emperor  thought  that  he  had  trampled  them  out  for 
ever.  And  yet,  before  three  centuries  were  over,  emperors 
had  assumed  their  hated  cross,  armies  had  laid  their  weap- 
ons at  their  feet,  and  "the  most  majestic  of  empires,  arrayed 
in  the  plenitude  of  worldly  power,"  had  bowed  down  to  wor- 
ship Jesus  Christ  and  Him  crucified.  Well  might  the 
baffled  and  dying  Julian  have  exclaimed,  "O  Galilean, 
thou  hast  conquered!"  Could  there  be  two  more  stu- 
pendous proofs  of  the  presence  of  God  in  History  than 
Christianity  and  Christendom?  What  can  account  for  so 
superb  a  triumph  of  the  merest  human  weakness?  One  fact 
only, —  the  power  of  Christ's  Resurrection.  "Not  by 
might,  nor  by  power,  but  by  my  Spirit,  saith  the  Lord  of 
hosts." 

And  History,  which  is  thus  a  teacher  of  God,  is  also 
a  preacher  of  judgment.  I  know  not  whether  the  tale  be 
true  that,  when,  after  the  bloody  orgies  of  the  Revolution, 
the  spell  of  terror  was  broken  which  had  paralyzed  the 
energies  of  France,  and  Robespierre  was  being  dragged  on 
the  tumbril  to  the  guillotine,  his  jaw  shattered  by  a  pistol- 


HISTORY. 


155 


shot, —  I  know  not  whether  it  be  true  that  an  old  man,  ap- 
proaching the  tumbril,  said  sadly  to  the  miserable  tyrant, 
"Yes!  Robespierre,  there  is  a  God"; — but  certainly  all 
History  reverberates,  as  in  thunders  of  Sinai,  the  truth, 
"Verily,  there  is  a  God  that  judgeth  the  earth."  How 
often  has  God  confounded  the  Babels,  and  dashed  in  pieces 
the  invincible  despotisms  of  the  world!  Read  the  insolent 
words  of  Sennacherib,  when  he  threatened  Judah  with  his 
immense  array,  and  how  Isaiah  defied  him,  and  how  the 
Lord  withered  his  army  in  a  single  night  with  one  blast  of 
the  simoom.  Read  the  terror  of  the  youth  when  the  hosts 
of  Syria  encompassed  Dothan,  and  Elisha,  opening  his  eyes, 
showed  him  the  hills  round  about  the  city,  full  of  horses 
and  chariots  of  fire.  Read  how  on  the  medal  which  com- 
memorated the  destruction  of  the  Spanish  Armada  was 
written,  "Flavit  et  dissipati  sunt,"--"He  sent  forth  His 
wind  and  scattered  them."  "You  trust,"  said  Oliver  Crom- 
well, "to  the  ditch  which  guards  your  coasts.  I  tell  you 
that,  if  you  break  God's  laws,  it  is  not  your  ditch  that  will 
save  you."  It  was  a  wiser  saying  than  the  insolent  sneer 
of  Napoleon,  who  said,  "I  observe  that  God  is  usually  on 
the  side  of  the  strongest  battalions."  And  how  did  God 
answer  the  taunt?  In  the  year  1812,  with  bursts  of  cheer- 
ing, the  glittering  files  of  France  and  her  tributary  kings, 
to  the  number  of  six  hundred  thousand  men,  crossed  the 
Niemen  to  invade  Russia.  They  took  Smolensko,  they  won 
the  bloody  battle  of  Borodino,  they  took  Moscow.  Then 
God  sent  down  upon  them  the  soft,  feathery  flakes  of  feeble, 
innocent  snow.  The  snows  of  God,  the  soft  snows  which  a 
breath  can  melt,  were  too  much  for  the  strongest  battalions. 
The  French  armies  perished  by  myriads;  and  the  Cossacks, 
with  their  lances,  thrust  out  the  miserable,  frozen,  famine- 


156  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

stricken  remnant  whom  the  northern  winter  had  not  slain. 
God  was  not,  that  time,  on  the  side  of  the  strongest  battal- 
ions. Alexander  of  Russia  understood  the  truth,  if  Napo- 
leon did  not;  and  on  his  commemorative  medal  were  the 
words,  "Not  to  me,  not  to  us,  but  to  Thy  name." 

Once  more,  History,  the  revealer  of  God,  the  revealer 
of  judgment,  is  also  the  preacher  of  great  moral  verities. 
Apply,  the  test  to  any  nation  you  like,  in  any  age  you  like, 
and  you  will  find  that  the  strength  of  nations  depends 
neither  on  their  gold,  nor  their  iron,  nor  their  trade,  nor 
their  armies,  but  .on  the  faithfulness  of  their  sons  to  justice 
and  the  moral  law.  A  nation  morally  corrupt  is  always  a 
nation  physically  weak.  The  change  may  come  in  a  few 
years.  When,  for  instance,  was  England  at  the  very  nadir 
of  her  degradation?  It  was  when  she  was  also  at  the  nadir 
of  her  morals.  It  was  in  the  days  of  the  Stuart  Restora- 
tion. Harlots  toyed  with  her  crown  in  the  gilded  chambers 
of  Whitehall.  The  dissolute  king  was  the  perjured  pen- 
sioner of  France.  A  few  years  earlier  it  seemed  as  if,  under 
the  stern  and  righteous  rule  of  Puritanism,  the  unclean 
spirit  had  been  cast  out;  but  now  that  unclean  spirit  re- 
turned, and  with  him  seven  other  spirits  more  wicked  than 
himself.  Under  the  Puritans  the  name  of  England  was 
feared  and  honored  in  every  land.  Under  Charles  II.  it 
became  a  by  word  and  a  hissing. 

In  1652  Blake,  the  great  admiral  of  the  Commonwealth, 
began  to  found  our  naval  supremacy.  In  1653  he  won 
against  the  Dutch  the  great  battle  of  Dortland.  In  1655  he 
crushed  the  pirates  of  Tunis  and  Algiers.  In  1656  he 
destroyed  the  silver-fleets  of  Spain.  He.  was  buried  in 
Westminster  Abbey  by  Cromwell;  and  in  1661  his  body, 
with  impotent  contumely,  was  dug  up  by  Charles  II.  A 


HISTORY. 


157 


-few  years  later,  under  such  a  king,  and  in  that  foul  orgy 
of  national  reaction  from  Puritan  morality,  the  Dutch, 
whom  Blake  had  swept  into  darkness,  burned  our  English 
shipping  in  the  very  mouth  of  the  Thames.  Yes!  national 
crime  is  a  thing  which  God  will  deal  with.  Did  not  God 
tell  the  Jews  five  thousand  years  ago  that,  if  they  committed 
iniquity,  ten  thousand  of  them  should  flee  at  the  rebuke  of 
ten,  at  the  rebuke  of  one  should  they  flee?  —  Take  another 
instance.  Why  did  a  handful  of  English  traders,  fugitives 
from  the  cruelty  of  kings  and  priests,  face  and  overthrow  in 
America  the  mighty  feudalism  of  France,  the  brutal  bigotry 
of  Spain?  Because  God  had  reserved  for  the  New  World  a 
better  destiny  than  the  tender  mercies  of  the  tyrant  and  the 
Inquisitor.  History,  then,  is,  as  a  living  historian  has  told 
us,  "a  voice  ever  sounding  across  the  centuries  the  eternal 
distinctions  of  right  and  wrong.  Opinions  alter,  manners 
change,  creeds  rise  and  fall;  but  the  moral  law  is  written 
on  the  tablets  of  eternity.  For  every  false  word  and  un- 
righteous deed,  for  cruelty  or  oppression,  for  lust  or  vanity, 
the  price  has  to  be  paid  at  last.  Justice  and  truth  alone 
endure  and  live.  Injustice  and  falsehood  may  be  long- 
lived,  but  doomsday  comes  to  them  at  last." 

History  is  an  unbroken  continuity  of  causes  and  effects, 
and  to  those  causes  and  effects  every  one  of  us  contributes. 
Good  and  bad  results  are  not  accidental :  they  are  the  nec- 
essary consequences  of  obeying  or  of  breaking  the  great 
laws  of  life.  Social  wrongs  end  in  social  revolutions. 
National  iniquity  means  national  decay.  Nudity  and  rags 
mean  indolence.  Disease  is,  in  thousands  of  cases,  intem- 
perance and  impurity  taken  at  a  later  stage.  Man  is  born 
for  holiness,  as  the  trees  of  the  forest  for  light.  The  his- 
tory of  the  world  is,  as  Schiller  sang,  the  judgment  of  the 


1 58  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

world.  It  is  God's  constant  decision  between  our  will  and 
His  will.  It  is  His  continuous  condemnation  of  human 
egotism,  of  drunkenness,  and  theft,  and  hatred,  and  lust, 
and  crime. 

And  if  all  this  be  so, —  if  History  be  indeed,  as  Fichte 
said,  "  a  constant  inflowing  of  God  into  human  affairs  "  ;  if  it 
be,  as  Vico  said,  "a  civil  theology  of  divine  Providence," — 
we  have  much  to  fear  and  much  to  do.  There  is  an  awful 
accumulation  of  poverty  and  pauperism,  an  ever  growing 
mass  of  dark,  subterranean,  impenetrable  blackguardism, 
the  ever-deepening  misery  of  multitudes,  crushed  into  filthy 
streets,  under  a  foul  air,  "  in  a  condition  as  cruel  as  that  of 
a  Roman  slave,  and  more  squalid  than  that  of  a  South  Sea 
Islander."  In  the  upper  classes  there  is  far  too  much  of  lax 
morals,  gilded  frivolity,  voluptuous  self-indulgence,  callous 
selfishness;  and  in  the  other  extreme  there  are  slums  where 
men  never  use  the  name  of  God  but  to  give  emphasis  to  a 
curse  or  gain  credence  for  a  lie.  In  those  slums  thrives 
and  breeds  the  triple-headed  Gorgon-monster  of  infidelity, 
impurity,  and  drink.  It  is  little  that  any  one  of  us  may 
seem  able  to  do  amidst  these  growing  perils;  yet  not  one 
of  us  can  evade  the  responsibilities  which  God  has  laid 
upon  us.  Every  one  of  you, —  just  as  much  as  any  minister 
of  religion, —  every  one  of  you  is  a  priest  of  God;  every 
one  of  you  is  in  his  measure  accountable  to  God  for  his 
neighbour  and  his  brother;  every  one  of  you  —  the  boy  at 
school,  the  clerk  in  his  office,  the  youth  in  the  shop,  the 
employer  of  labour,  the  father  of  a  family — is  helping 
either  to  wreck  others  on  the  reef  or  to  steer  them  to  the 
port.  Which  is  each  of  you, —  a  priest  of  God  or  a  priest 
of  devils?  The  cruel  man,  who  lives  in  the  spirit  of  hatred 
and  malice,  is  a  priest,  not  of  God,  but  of  Moloch.  The 


HISTORY. 

base,  greedy,  dishonest  man,  who  only  lives  to  get  money, 
is  a  priest  not  of  God,  but  of  Belial.  The  corrupt,  unclean, 
dissolute  man  is  a  priest,  not  of  God,  but  of  Beelzebub,  the 
god  of  filth.  Every  one  among  you  who  is  a  better  and 
gambler,  or  a  cheat,  or  a  drunkard,  or  a  liar,  or  a  slanderer, 
or  a  fornicator  and  corrupter  of  others,  is  hastening  the 
ruin  of  the  nation  while  he  consummates  his  own:  he  is  a 
curse  to  the  world  as  well  as  to  himself.  It  is  a  devil's 
proverb  which  says  of  any  one  that  "he  is  no  man's  enemy 
but  his  own."  If  he  be  his  own  enemy  he  is  the  enemy  of 
others.  His  bad  example  is  a  spiritual  impoisonment:  it 
is  the  teaching  of  a  sacrilege;  it  is  the  worship  of  a  demon. 
Vice  is  not  only  an  evil  to  the  transgressor,  but  also  a  crime 
against  the  feeble  whom  he  helps  to  corrupt.  We  live  in 
a  dangerous  time,  and  it  may  be  too  late  to  avert  some  of 
our  dangers.  Blinded  by  passion,  steeped  in  ignorance, 
having  lost  or  rendered  flaccid  the  moral  fibre  of  old  days, 
we  may  with  a  light  heart  ruin  kingdoms  and  barter  away 
the  inheritance  of  ages.  England  may  become  the  worst 
bane  of  England's  greatness,  and  may, 

"  Like  a  forlorn  and  desperate  castaway, 
Do  shameful  execution  on  herself." 

But  whatever  may  be  coming  upon  us,  whatever  be  right, 
whatever  wrong,  we  may  take  this  comfort.  If  we  continue 
a  righteous,  God-fearing  nation,  we  can  never  wholly  be 
cast  down.  The  best  Christian  is  also  the  best  citizen.  He 
who  does  his  duty  from  day  to  day  to  the  best  of  his  power 
as  he  sees  it;  he  who  has  "a  strong  will,  the  servant  of  a 
tender  conscience  " ;  he  who  loves  and  fears  God  with  all  his 
heart,  and  loves  his  neighbour  as  himself;  he  who,  in  a  pure 
and  manly  life  of  such  services  as  he  has  it  in  his  power  to 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

render  to  his  fellow-men,  strives  always,  and  with  all  his 
might,  "to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  hum- 
bly with  his  God,"-  — that  man,  as  he  is  a  true  Christian,  so 
also  is  he  a  true  patriot,  a  true  supporter  and  defender  of 
his  country.  Such  a  man  need  fear  nothing.  God  will 
guard  him  from  all  evil  in  this  life  or  overrule  it  to  his 
deeper  blessedness;  and,  when  the  last  wave  of  death's  river 
has  closed  over  him,  he  shall  hear  the  voice  of  his  Saviour 
saying  to  him:  "Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant. 
Enter  thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord." 


ART. 

"  Then  wrought  Bezaleel  and  Aholiab,  and  every  wise-hearted  man,  in  whom 
the  Lord  put  wisdom  and  understanding." — Ex.  xxxvi.  I. 

ART  is  no  mere  amusement  for  the  idle  or  ostentation 
for  the  luxurious,  but  in  past  ages  has  been,  and  still  is, 
a  consummate  teacher  of  mankind.  And  let  me  say  at 
the  outset  that  I  look  on  all  true  and  worthy  Art  as  a  thing 
essentially  sacred.  There  is  no  error  more  vulgar  and 
more  benumbing  than  that  which  cleaves  a  chasm  between 
the  sacred  and  the  secular,  and  thus  prevents  religion 
from  suffusing  and  interpenetrating  the  whole  realm  of 
daily  life.  True  Art  comes  from  the  Spirit  of  God.  It  is 
the  outcome  of  an  exquisite  faculty,  which,  like  "every  good 
gift,  and  every  perfect  gift,  cometh  down  from  above,  from 
that  Father  of  lights  with  whom  is  no  variableness  or 
shadow  of  turning."  Art,  as  a  faculty,  is  as  sacred  as  any 
of  the  highest  impulses  of  humanity.  Whether,  as  the 
Greek  legend  says,  it  sprang  from  love,  or  from  some  other 
noble  passion,  it  has  its  roots  in  the  depths  of  man's  being, 
and  is  well-nigh  as  ancient  as  his  race. 

And,  as  the  technical  skill  of  Art  is  here  attributed 
to  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  and  is  therefore  sacred,  so,  too, 
is  the  right  aim  of  Art.  We  fatally  degrade  the  conception 
of  Art  if  we  take  of  it  the  ignorant  view  that  the  essence 
of  Art  is  imitation.  He  has  abdicated  the  office  of  an 
artist  who  simply  repeats  for  the  mass  of  men  what  they 
see  for  themselves.  It  is  true  that  no  less  a  thinker  than 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Plato  fell  into  this  error.  He  expels  artists  from  his 
model  Republic,  on  the  ground  that  truth  (i.e.,  essential 
reality)  is  the  one  object  of  man's  search,  and  that  the  only 
abstract  and  ultimate  truth  is  to  be  found  in  the  divine 
Ideas,  which  alone  represent  absolute  Being.  Regarding 
all  outward  phenomena  as  mere  material  copies  of  tran- 
scendent facts  which  exist  in  the  mind  of  God,  he  regarded 
the  artistic  representations  of  outward  things  as  being  but 
copies  of  copies,  and  therefore  twice  removed  from  truth. 
But  a  Pheidias  or  an  Apelles  might  have  answered  him, 
"So  far  from  being  the  copyists  of  copies,  we  aim  both  to 
interpret  and  to  get  nearer  the  divine  Ideal.  We,  no  less 
than  the  poets,  are poietai  (makers):  we  do  not  imitate,  but 
in  our  measure  we  create."  Art  is  indeed  the  representa- 
tion of  the  ideal  under  the  forms  of  the  actual.  "It  con- 
ceives of  unity  beneath  variety;  of  the  general  within  the 
particular;  of  the  moral  within  the  physical;  of  the  spirit- 
ual in  the  material;  of  the  infinite  beyond  the  finite.  We 
witness  to,  we  prophesy  of,  the  restoration  of  the  eternal 
beauty  and  harmony  which  sin  has  marred."  "How  beauti- 
ful," says  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  "are  the  imitations  of 
beautiful  things,  when  they  preserve  visibly  the  impress  of 
the  beauty  of  the  prototype!"  When  Flaxman  walked 
through  the  lowest  slums  of  London,  he  perpetually  stopped 
to  point  out  to  his  companion  the  ideal  beauty  which 
gleamed  out  of  the  rags  and  dirt  of  the  poor  squalid  chil- 
dren in  the  streets.  It  is  the  function  of  the  artist  to  rec- 
ognize and  reproduce  this  hidden  and  underlying  loveli- 
ness; to  shadow  forth  the  perfect  in  the  marred;  to  make 
the  trivial  rise  to  the  expression  of  the  sublime. 

"And  thus  'mid  mire  and  dirt  e'en  here 
The  lilies  of  God's  love  appear." 


ART.  16$ 

Great  artists  have  always  felt  this  sacredness  of  their 
function.  When  the  Greek  sculptor  was  asked  why  he 
took  such  pains  with  the  hair  of  a  statue  of  which  the  face 
alone  would  be  visible  to  the  spectator,  and  that  high  up  on 
the  temple-front,  where  few  would  see  it,  he  nobly  replied, 
"The  gods  will  see  it."  "Since" — so  ran  the  statutes 
of  the  guild  of  Sienese  painters  in  1355 — "since  we  are 
teachers  to  unlearned  men,  and  since  no  undertaking,  how- 
ever small,  can  be  begun  or  ended  without  the  power  to  do, 
without  knowledge,  and  without  true  love  of  the  work,  and 
since  in  God  every  perfection  is  eminently  united,  we  will 
earnestly  ask  aid  of  the  divine  grace,  and  begin  by  a  dedi- 
cation to  the  honor  of  the  name  of  the  most  Holy  Trinity." 

And  Art,  thus  sacred  as  an  exquisite,  God-given  fac- 
ulty, and  as  the  striving  after  the  ideal,  is  sacred  also  as 
the  expression  of  human  feeling.  It  has  been  defined  as 
revealing  "the  consciousness  of  emotion  in  the  presence 
of  the  phenomena  of  life  and  nature."  It  springs  from  the 
depths  of  personality,  and  expresses  its  infinite  variations. 
It  is  not  only  a  transcript  of  the  facts  of  nature,  but  of 
those  facts  bathed  in  the  darkening  or  illuminating  atmos- 
phere of  the  artist's  thoughts.  In  the  man's  works  we  see 
the  man  himself.  In  the  sunny  tenderness  and  vernal  in- 
nocence of  Fra  Angelico;  in  the  pure  religious  aim  and 
perfect  artistic  power  of  Giovanni  Bellini;  in  the  sweet 
symbolism  of  Carpaccio;  in  the  chastened  severity  of  Ber- 
nardino Luini;  in  the  stern,  sad  spirit  of  Michael  Angelo, 
the  Dante  of  Sculpture;  in  the  radiant  and  love-compel- 
ling serenity  of  Raphael;  in  the  gorgeous  pomp  and  luxuri- 
ous prodigality  of  Rubens;  in  the  gloom  and  pathos  of 
Rembrandt;  in  the  stormy  splendour  and  final  ruin  of 
Turner, —  we  see  the  reflexion  of  the  characters  and  desti- 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

nies  of  men  who,  in  setting  forth  for  us  the  gloom  and 
glory  of  life  or  nature,  set  forth  also  the  gloom  or  the  glory 
of  their  own  souls;  and  that  is  one  reason  why  the  interest 
of  pictures  must  ever  be  deep  as  the  interests  of  life.  It  is 
a  solemn  thought  to  the  artist  himself  that  his  ethos,  his 
moral  tendency,  unconsciously,  yet  inevitably,  repeats  itself 
in  the  work  of  his  hands.  If  he  be  swayed  by  greed  of 
gain,  by  condescension  to  a  vulgar  desire  for  popularity, 
by  bitter  envy  or  by  unhallowed  passion,  these  faults  and 
vices,  no  less  than  his  pulses  of  nobleness  and  gleams  of 
holy  aspiration,  will  in  silence,  yet  with  all  the  certainty 
of  fate,  tinge  every  canvas  which  he  paints.  Yes :  the 
character,  the  religion,  of  a  painter  tell  upon  his  works. 
"Believe  me,"  says  Sir  Frederick  Leighton,  "whatever  of 
dignity,  whatever  of  strength,  we  have  within  us,  will  dig- 
nify and  make  strong  the  labours  of  our  hands:  whatever 
littleness  degrades  our  spirit  will  lessen  them  and  drag 
them  down.  Whatever  noble  fire  is  in  our  hearts  will  burn 
also  in  our  work;  whatever  purity  is  ours  will  chasten  and 
exalt  it;  for  as  we  are,  so  our  work  is;  and  what  we  sow 
in  our  lives,  that  beyond  a  doubt  we  shall  reap,  for  good 
or  for  ill,  in  the  strengthening  or  defacing  of  whatever 
gifts  have  fallen  to  our  lot."  And  this  is  why  the  poet 
Wordsworth  wrote  to  Sir  George  Beaumont:  — 

"  High  is  our  calling,  friend  !     Poetic  art, 
Whether  the  instrument  of  words  she  use 
Or  pencil,  pregnant  with  ethereal  hues, 
Hath  need  of  mind  and  soul  in  every  part 
Heroically  fashioned,  to  infuse 
Faith  in  the  whispers  of  the  lonely  Muse." 

And  do  not  think  that  these  are  only  Academic  theses. 
You  may  see  them  illustrated  with  fatal  force  on  the  walls 


ART. 


I65 


of  our  picture  galleries.  Contrast,  for  instance,  two  painters, 
both  eminent,  but  oh!  how  different, —  Salvator  Rosa  and 
Fra  Angelico  di  Fiesole.  u  Salvator,"  says  our  great  art 
critic,  "saw  early  what  was  gross  and  terrible.  His  temper 
confirmed  itself  in  evil,  and  became  more  and  more  fierce 
and  morose.  The  gloom  gained  upon  him,  and  grasped  him. 
Of  all  men  whose  work  I  have  ever  studied,  he  gives  me 
most  distinctly  the  idea  of  a  lost  spirit, —  kce  damne"  Salva- 
tor,' as  Michelet  pitilessly  calls  him.  The  religion  of  the 
earth  is  a  horror  to  him.  He  gnashes  his  teeth  at  it,  rages 
at  it,  mocks  and  gibes  at  it."  But  now  contrast  this  reveller 
in  the  horrible,  this  painter  of  ghastliness  and  desolation, 
of  the  vulture's  beak  and  the  bandit's  prey,  with  that  other 
painter,  the  angel  faces  of  whose  pure  dreams  delight  us 
still;  who  painted  "beings  so  fervent  that  they  are  beau- 
tiful, so  nobly  beautiful  that  they  are  good."  Angelico 
painted  heavenly  pictures  because  he  lived  a  heavenly  life, 
—  a  life  uncankered  by  envy,  unruffled  by  contention,  unde- 
filed  by  lust.  Earth  for  him  was  heaven,  because  he  had 
reflected  some  of  heaven's  azure  in  his  own  peaceful  soul. 
He  could  paint  angels,  because  he  saw  them,  and  lived 
with  them,  and  heard  their  warbling  melodies.  Under 
every  cypress  avenue  they  walked.  "He  had  seen  their 
white  robes,  whiter  than  the  dawn,  at  his  bedside,  as  he 
awoke  in  early  summer.  They  had  sung  with  him,  one  at 
each  side,  when  his  voice  failed  for  joy  at  sweet  matin  and 
vesper  time;  and  his  eyes  were  blinded  by  their  wings 
when  the  sun  set  behind  the  hills  of  Luino."  On  Salva- 
tor's  pictures  are  the  traces  of  the  horror  and  malignity 
which  had  defiled  his  soul;  on  Angelico's,  the  sign  of  a 
calm  and  heavenly  frame.  Salvator  sought  a  home  among 
the  brigands  of  the  Abruzzi,  Angelico  in  the  peaceful  clois- 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

ters  of  San  Marco.  "He  who  would  practise  the  art  of 
painting,"  he  said,  "has  need  of  quiet;  he  who  would  do 
the  work  of  Christ  must  dwell  continually  with  Him." 
In  this  contrast,  do  you  not  see  another  element  of  the  per- 
manence with  which  Art  appeals  to  our  sympathies,  because 
it  is  an  eternal  manifestation  of  that  which  has  for  us  all 
undying  interest, —  the  human  soul? 

Thus  far,  then,  we  have  seen  in  the  abstract  the  ele- 
ments of  the  intrinsic  sacredness  of  Art  in  its  God-granted 
faculty;  in  its  striving  after  the  ideal;  in  its  expression  of 
the  artist's  soul.  Let  us  proceed  to  illustrate  some  of  its 
various  functions. 

You  know  to  how  great  an  extent  in  all  ages  paint- 
ing and  sculpture  have  been  occupied  with  portraiture;  the 
simple  reproduction,  as  it  might  seem  to  careless  observers, 
of  the  human  face  divine.  Now,  has  portraiture  a  mere 
historic  interest?  Does  it  merely  gratify  our  curiosity  to 
see  how  this  or  that  man  looked  whose  name  we  have 
heard?  Even  if  that  were  all,  the  manner  and  surround- 
ings in  which  men  have  desired  that  they  and  their  fami- 
lies should  be  painted  are  not  without  significance.  Stand 
before  the  Madonna  of  the  younger  Holbein  in  the  Dres- 
den Gallery  and  see  how  the  burgomaster  Meyer  desired 
that  he  and  his  should  be  painted,  all  in  deepest  reverence 
and  devotion,  alike  the  strong  youth  and  the  aged  grand- 
mother kneeling  humbly  before  the  Heavenly  Child.  Or, 
in  the  same  gallery,  see  how  Paul  Cagliari,  of  Verona, 
could  imagine  no  happier  or  sweeter  way  of  painting  those 
noble  Venetian  boys  and  girls  of  his,  with  all  their  varying 
shades  of  character,  than  by  having  them  presented  by 
Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity  to  the  Virgin  and  her  Babe,  and 
welcomed  into  her  gentle  presence  by  saints  and  angels. 


ART.  167 

Might  not  modern  portraiture  and  modern  society  learn 
something  from  this  simple  faithfulness?  Might  we  not 
profitably  observe  that  the  painters  of  Venice  represent  her 
doges,  not  with  all  the  splendour  of  fashion  and  upholstery, 
but  "kneeling  crownless,  returning  thanks  to  God  for  His 
help,  or  as  priests  interceding  for  the  nation  in  its  afflic- 
tion"? Is  it  to  our  credit  that  to  represent  us  in  religious 
attitudes  would  appear  almost  shocking  to  a  society  desti- 
tute of  faith?  Does  it  show  our  superiority  that  we  so 
often  choose  portraits  which  show  us  men  and  women  not 
of  God's  making,  but  of  the  tailor's  or  milliner's,  mere  lay 
figures  for  the  display  of  embroideries  and  satins,  of  rings 
and  fans?  But,  quite  apart  from  these  surroundings,  every 
true  portrait  is  the  manifestation  of  a  human  soul  in  its 
prophecy  or  its  history,  its  sorrow  or  triumph,  its  benefi- 
cence or  baseness, — 

"Each  face  obedient  to  its  passion's  law, 
Each  passion  clear  proclaimed  without  a  tongue." 

It  is  the  object  of  the  great  painter,  not  to  present  the 
mere  mask  of  the  features,  whether  noble  or  vapid,  sincere 
or  sly,  ploughed  by  passion  or  smoothed  by  hypocrisy,  but 
rather  to  add  the  very  flash  of  life,  to  look  through  the 
eyes  into  the  very  soul,  to  get  divinely  behind  the  veil  of 
flesh,  and  to  present  for  all  time  the  inmost  and  immortal 
being  of  the  man.  It  was  so  that  Raphael  painted  Pope 
Julius  II.,  and  Carpaccio  the  doge  Mocenigo,  and  Giovanni 
Bellini  the  doge  Loredano.  The  faces  may  not  be  in  the 
least  beautiful,  and  yet  the  portraits  will  live  in  the  ad- 
miration of  all  time.  They  give  the  character,  not  only 
the  features,  because  they  express  not  the  vapidity  of  fash- 
ion, or  the  insolence  of  self-assertion,  not  an  exhibition  of 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

smirking  vanity,  dull  pomposity,  or  presumptuous  ostenta- 
tion, but  the  human  being  in  the  image  of  God,  and  at  his 
best. 

Again,  Art  is  the  reflection  of  History:  it  is  an  il- 
lustrative chapter  in  the  autobiography  of  nations.  For 
Art  has  in  it  an  element  of  the  inevitable.  "  By  a  neces- 
sity deep  as  the  world,"  says  Emerson,  "the  artist's  pen  or 
chisel  seems  to  have  been  held  and  guided  by  a  gigantic 
hand  to  describe  a  line  on  the  history  of  the  human  race." 
An  artist  must  be  in  some  respects  the  child  of  the  society 
to  which  he  belongs,  yet  he  may  rise  immeasurably  above 
its  vulgar  average,  and,  concentrating  all  that  is  noblest  in 
its  impulses,  he  may  help  to  elevate  its  entire  standard. 
And,  besides  this  general  influence,  an  artist,  if  he  will  not 
sink  into  the  mere  pet  or  favorite  of  his  age,  may  become 
a  mighty  prophet  and.  preacher  against  its  vices.  In  Mr. 
Ruskin's  house  I  once  sat  gazing  on  Turner's  picture  of 
the  slave  ship.  It  is  the  pictiire  of  a  black  slaver  chased 
by  a  frigate,  under  a  lurid  sky,  and  flinging  the  slaves 
overboard  into  the  lurid  sea.  The  horrors  of  the  picture 
reveal,  interpret,  emphasize,  the  horrors  of  the  fact.  The 
sky  and  the  multitudinous  sea  are  bathed,  are  incarnadined, 
with  blood, —  the  blood  of  vengeance,  the  blood  of  wrong. 
That  lurid,  blood-red  picture,  overwhelming  in  its  solem- 
nity and  shuddering  intuition  of  wrong,  is  Turner's  way  of 
saying  to  his  fellow-citizens,  "Verily,  there  is  a  God  that 
judgeth  the  earth."  It  is  his  way  of  helping  to  educate  the 
national  conscience.  "Yes,"  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  'Hhat  is 
Turner's  sermon  against  the  slave-trade  ";  —  and,  limited 'as 
are  the  means  with  which  Art  works,  no  sermon  more 
awfully  effective  was  ever  preached. 

Again,   Art   may   be   in   a   very   high   sense   an    inter- 


ART. 


169 


preter  of  Life, —  of  life  in  all  its  phases,  various  as  the 
bosom  of  the  sea, —  its  storm  and  calm,  its  splendour  and  its 
squalor,  its  gladness  and  desolations.  The  great  French 
painter,  Millet,  who  died  twelve  years  ago,  says  that,  when 
he  saw  Michael  Angelo's  drawing  of  a  man  in  a  swoon,  he 
seemed  to  touch  the  heart  and  hear  the  speech  of  that 
great  sculptor,  and  see  how,  with  a  single  figure,  he  could 
personify  the  great  and  the  good  of  all  Humanity.  And  it 
was  Millet's  own  work,  amid  the  insult  and  neglect  of  a 
generation  which  now  flings  its  useless  roses  upon  his 
tomb,  to  preach  to  France  two  lessons  which  she  most 
sorely  needs,  the  lesson  of  the  intrinsic  grandeur  of  man- 
hood, of  the  infinite  sanctity  of  toil.  At  this  moment  a 
writer  who  has  prostituted  the  gift  of  genius  to  the  service 
of  corruption  has  deluged  Europe  with  romances  which 
represent  the  life  of  the  French  peasantry  as  a  nightmare 
and  leprosy  of  foulness.  "His  women  are  mostly  maenads, 
his  men  satyrs,"  and,  "according  to  his  perverted  gospel, 
human  nature  is  simply  bestial  when  it  is  not  infernal." 
The  eye  only  sees  what,  it  brings  with  it  the  power  of  see- 
ing. That  is  what  M.  Zola  has  seen;  but,  happily,  two 
true  artists  have  seen  that  men  and  women,  peasants  though 
they  be,  are  not  all  akin  to  the  tiger  and  the  ape,  but  that 
humble  life  still  abounds  in  purity  and  faithfulness.  Look 
at  the  little  pictures  of  Edouard  Frere  in  their  beauty,  dig- 
nity, and  tender  lowliness.  They  are  pictures  in  which  he 
breathes  the  everlasting  peace  of  heaven  round  the  village 
children,  by  whom,  if  she  can  save  them  from  the  taint  of 
animal  degradation,  France  may  yet  be  redeemed  from  her 
decadence.  Take  his  little  pictures  of  prayer,  in  which  the 
dear,  bowed,  patient  face  and  folded  hands  show  us  that  to 
the  humble  peasant  mother  her  little  ones  are  as  surely  in 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

God's  presence  as  if  the  poor  cottage  floor  were  the  rock 
of  Sinai.  "He  will  do  more  for  his  country,"  it  has  been 
said,  "  if  he  can  lead  her  to  look  where  he  looks,  and  to 
love  where  he  loves,  than  all  the  proud  painters  who  ever 
gave  lustre  to  her  state  or  endurance  to  her  glory."  And 
the  same  high  message  was  told  by  Francois  Millet,  with 
yet  greater  originality  and  power.  He  had  seen  from  in- 
fancy the  beauty  of  holiness  in  the  Breton  hovel,  and  he 
deliberately  faced  starvation  rather  than  pander  to  the 
voluptuous  baseness  of  his  day.  His  pictures  now  sell  for 
hundreds  of  pounds,  but  in  his  own  day  he  had  once  to  sell 
six  drawings  for  a  pair  of  shoes.  "Francois,"  said  his  old 
peasant  grandmother  to  him,  "follow  the  example  of  that 
man  who  said,  'I  paint  for  eternity.' '  Sad  his  pictures  are, 
very  sad :  the  toiler  in  the  vineyard,  the  hoer  of  the  clod, 
the  labour  of  women  in  field  or  farm;  bread  eaten  according 
to  the  primal  curse  —  or  shall  I  call  it  rather  the  primal 
blessing? — in  the  sweat  of  the  brow;  hardship,  monotony, 
patient  endurance,  all  that  had  been  hitherto  despised  as 
subject  of  Art.  But  in  it  all  he  saw  true  humanity  and 
great  poetry,  the  essential  dignity  of  man  as  man,  the  age- 
long struggle  of  man's  will  with  Nature  and  destiny, 
which,  without  any  false  sentiment,  without  any  prettifying 
of  types,  may  give  action  as  heroic  and  beauty  as  rare  to  a 
sower  or  a  gleaner  as  to  the  Faun  of  Praxiteles  or  the 
Apollo  of  the  Belvedere.  And  withal,  over  the  cry  of  the 
ground,  over  the  sadness  of  field  and  wood,  over  the  toil 
and  suffering  of  man,  as  part  of  the  great  order  of  the 
universe,  he  breathed,  as  it  were,  something  of  the  eternal 
azure,  the  sense  of  God's  love  shadowed  in  the  love  of  wife 
and  child  and  home;  the  sense  of  God's  Eternity  burning 
like  some  sure  though  unrisen  morrow  beyond  his  twilight 
scenes. 


ART. 


I/I 


And  the  painter  is  an  interpreter  of  Nature,  as  well 
as  of  human  life.  "Ah!"  said  Millet,  "I  should  like 
those  who  look  at  what  I  do  to  feel  the  terrors  and  splendours 
of  the  night.  One  ought  to  be  able  to  hear  the  melodies, 
the  silences,  the  murmurs  of  the  air.  The  infinite  must  be 
perceived.  They  tell  me  I  see  no  charms  in  the  country: 
I  see  much  more  than  charms,  I  see  infinite  glories.  I  see 
the  little  flowers  of  which  Christ  said  'that  even  Solomon 
in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these.'  I  see 
the  aureoles  of  the  dandelions,  and  the  sun  which  spreads 
out  beyond  the  world  its  glory  in  the  clouds."  And  such 
is  the  pre-eminent  task  of  all  true  artists.  They  educate 
us  in  the  perception  of  beauty;  — 

"  For,  don't  you  mark,  we're  made  so  that  we  love, 
First  when  we  see  them  painted,  things  we  have  passed 
Perhaps  a  hundred  times,  nor  cared  to  see." 

And  thus  the  artist  lends  us  the  help  of  his  own  intuition. 
He  opens  our  eyes  to  read,  writ  large  over  the  universe, 
God's  autograph  of  love.  We  perhaps  first  learn  truly  and 
fully  to  admire  God's  works  when  some  brighter  and  less 
world-clogged  soul  than  ours  has  flung  its  sunlight  upon 
them.  Nobly  has  our  English  school  of  landscape  fulfilled 
this  function.  It  opens  windows  for  us  into  the  sunlight 
from  the  gloom.  It  helps  us  to  feel  that  "the  world's  no 
blank  for  us, —  no  blot";  that  "it  means  intensely,  and 
means  good."  It  educes  in  the  region  of  the  feeling  a 
mighty  counterpoise  to  the  atheism  of  the  intellect.  Those 
landscapes  may  appeal  from  the  syllogism  of  a  godless 
logic  to  the  syllogism  of  a  glowing  faith.  They  show  us 
that,  in  the  words  of  the  Book  of  Wisdom,  "from  the 
beauty  of  things  visible,  proportionally  the  Maker  of  them 


1-J2  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

is  observed."  "I  never  saw  such  colors  in  nature  as  you 
represent,"  said  some  one  to  Turner.  "No,"  answered  the 
great  painter;  "but  don't  you  wish  you  could  ?  "  "I  assert 
for  myself,"  said  the  poet-painter,  William  Blake,  "that  I 
do  not  behold  the  outward  creation,  and  that  to  me  it  is 
hindrance,  and  not  action.  'What?  '  it  will  be  questioned, 
'when  the  sun  rises,  do  you  not  see  a  round  disk  of  fire, 
somewhat  like  a  guinea?'  Oh,  no,  no,  I  see  an  innumera- 
ble company  of  the  heavenly  host,  crying,  'Holy,  holy, 
holy  is  the  Lord  God  Almighty.'  I  question  not  my  cor- 
poreal eye  any  more  than  I  would  question  a  window  con- 
cerning a  sight.  I  look  through  it,  and  not  with  it."  The 
poet  says  that  "there  is  no  great  or  small,"  and  the  painter 
teaches  us  this  truth  even  in  the  case  of  things  that  seem 
the  smallest.  He  shows  us  the  presence  of  God  in  every 
stain  of  silver  or  orange  lichen  on  the  crag,  just  as  the 
fainting  African  traveller  saw  it  in  the  single  tuft  of 
emerald  moss.  And  then 

"  No  pebble  at  my  feet  but  proves  a  sphere ; 
No  Chaffinch  but  implies  the  Cherubim; 
No  hum  of  lily-muffled  bee  but  finds 
Some  coupling  music  with  the  spinning  stars. 

Earth's  crammed  with  heaven, 
And  every  common  bush  afire  with  God ; 
But  only  those  who  see  take  off  their  shoes, 
The  rest  sit  round  it  and  eat  blackberries." 

But  the  true  artist  makes  us  recognize  in  the  loveliness 
of  created  things,  as  it  were,  one  single  rose  flung  down 
from  the  summer  opulence  of  God.  As  on  the  curtains 
which  shrouded  the  entrance  to  the  Holiest,  through 
which  the  High  Priest  passed  into  the  presence  of  God, 
were  woven  lily,  and  palm,  and  cherubim,  so  the  artist 


ART. 


173 


shows   us  the  embroideries   of   the  arras  folds  of   earth's 
curtains, 

"  To  prove  what  amplitude  in  store 
Lies  just  beyond  the  entrance  door." 

And  even  now  we  have  by  no  means  reached  the  sum- 
mits of  Art's  high  power  and  endeavour.  She  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  inspired  interpreter  of  the  Ideal;  she  is  a 
prophet  of  God,  to  unfold  to  common  men  the  Sacramental 
beauties  of  Nature;  she  has  a  spell  to  decipher  the  deep 
mysteries  of  life.  But,  beyond  all  this,  she  contributes 
greatly  and  powerfully  to  the  elevation  of  the  aim  of 
society,  and  to  the  deepest  religious  emotions  which  uplift 
man  into  nearer  unity  with  God. 

•I  have  spoken  already  of  what  Art  may  do  as  a  wit- 
ness against  national  sins;  but  must  I  not  touch  also  on  her 
work  in  enforcing  on  us  individually  the  grandeur  of  the 
moral  law?  Among  the  domestic  incidents  and  nursery 
idylls  which  cover  the  walls  of  our  Academies,  and  which 
may  at  least  deepen  for  us  the  spell  of  home  affection  and 
show  us  how  much  there  is  of  beauty  and  brightness  to 
gladden  the  sorrows  of  our  common  life,  do  we  not  constantly 
come  across  some  deep  note  of  moral  warning  against  the 
sins  and  perils  alike  of  the  society  and  the  individual? 

We  know  the  greed  and  worldliness  of  society,  and  the 
base  motives  which  often  predominate  in  marriage.  Has 
the  painter  nothing  to  tell  us  in  such  a  picture  as  Mr. 
Orchardson's  "Le  Mariage  de  Convenance"?  It  represents 
a  husband  and  wife  —  an  aged  roue*  and  a  woman  of  fashion 
—  dining  together  in  the  splendid  luxury  of  a  loveless 
home.  In  their  faces  the  whole  story  is  told.  It  is  a 
warning  to  society  in  all  ranks.  It  tells  that  wealth, 
sparkling  wine,  gems,  delicate  viands,  unlimited  magnifi- 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

cence,  cannot  contribute  one  sand-grain  to  happiness,  where 
the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil  reign,  and  there  is  a  flap- 
ping of  harpy  wings  about  the  roof.  The  following  year 
there  was  the  sequel  to  it.  It  was  called  "After."  The 
same  gorgeous  room,  the  same  luxurious  table;  "but  now 
the  husband  sits  —  lonely  in  his  deserted  home,  haunted  by 
nameless  miseries,  dogged  by  the  shadows  of  a  wasted  life, 
while  "the  fires  of  hell  mix  with  his  hearth."  And  are  not 
these  two  pictures  two  powerful  sermons  —  sermons  needed 
by  a  selfish  and  worldly  society  —  on  the  text,  "Better  is  a 
dinner  of  herbs  where  love  is,  than  a  stalled  ox  and  hatred 
therewith"? 

There  was  yet  a  deeper  lesson  in  another  strange  picture 
by  Mr.  Burne  Jones,  called  "The  Depths  of  the  Sea." 
A  mermaid,  beautiful  in  face,  but  hideously  repellent  in 
her  scaly  train,  has  flung  her  arms  around  a  youth,  and  is 
dragging  him  down  through  the  green  waters  to  her  cave. 
In  her  face  is  the  intense  malignity  of  cruel  triumph  and 
cruel  scorn;  in  the  youth's  face  is  the  agony  of  frustration 
and  of  death.  And  the  motto  below  is,  "  Habes  tota  quod 
mente  petisti,  Infelix!  "  -  "Thou  hast  what  thou  soughtest 
with  all  thy  soul,  unhappy  one."  Oh  that  it  were  in  my 
power  to  preach  to  all  young  men  a  sermon  of  meaning  so 
intense  as  that  picture!  The  mermaid,  like  the  Siren  of 
mythology,  like  the  strange  woman  of  the  Proverbs,  is  the 
harlot  Sense.  She  is  the  type  of  carnal  temptation,  end- 
ing in  disillusion,  shame,  anguish,  death.  It  is  the  mean- 
ing of  that  saying  of  the  rabbis,  "The  demons  come  to  us 
smiling  and  beautiful:  when  they  have  done  their  work, 
they  drop  their  mask."  It  is  the  meaning  of  Solomon: 
"But  he  knoweth  not  that  the  dead  are  there,  and  that  her 
guests  are  in  the  depths  of  hell."  God  has  granted  to 


ART. 


175 


that  youth  his  heart's  desire,  and  sent  leanness  withal  into 
his  bones.  He  has  got  what  he  passionately  longed  for, 
and  it  is  —  death! 

Or,  once  more,  if  a  youth  needs  not  so  much  a  warning 
against  the  idolatries  of  sense  as  hope  to  secure  the  con- 
quest over  them,  could  he  learn  the  lesson  in  a  more  inspir- 
ing form  than  by  going  into  our  National  Gallery  and  there 
reading  the  meaning  of  Turner's  great  pictures  of  Apollo 
and  the  Python?  The  youthful  Sun-God,  the  emblem  of 
victorious  purity,  is  seated  in  his  circle  of  light,  launching 
arrow  after  arrow  at  that  huge,  loathly  monster  of  corrup- 
tion. Awful  and  terrible  as  that  destructive  monster  looks, 
it  is  but  a  colossal  worm.  When  the  arrow  pierces  it,  it 
bursts' asunder  in  the  midst.  Any  youth,  I  think,  who  had 
in  his  soul  one  gleam  of  noble  imagination  might  well,  as 
he  looked  at  that  picture,  be  inspired  to  hate  the  foulness 
of  that  impurity  which  can  so  frightfully  crush  to  death  all 
who  put  themselves  in  its  power,  but  which  is  yet  weak  as 
a  worm  to  those  who  "walk  in  the  light  as  Christ  is  in  the 
light,"  and  who  pierce  the  pestilent  foulness  with  the 
arrows  of  the  dawn. 

Thus,  then,  we  have  seen  that  Art,  while  merely  fol- 
lowing her  own  high  instinct,  may  still  climb  with  Moses 
the  burning  crags  of  Sinai,  and  become  a  preacher  and 
a  prophet  to  mankind.  In  indirect  yet  deeply  effectual 
ways,  she  can  awaken  the  conscience  of  nations,  reveal  the 
hollowness  of  worldly  aims,  teach  us  by  nature's  sunbeams 
to  climb  to  the  Father  of  Lights,  show  us  that  the  wages  of 
sin  is  death,  and  that  God  can  give  us  the  victory  in  Christ 
our  Lord.  She  can  fulfil  in  the  highest  sense  her  ideal 
function  of  "presenting  to  us,  in  many  parts  and  fashions, 
the  dim  yearning  of  the  Universe  for  its  divine  restitution 


j^6  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY, 

into  perfect  unity  with  the  will  of  God";  while,  at  the 
same  time,  merely  as  a  minister  to  our  innocent  and  noble 
happiness,  she  may  in  these  dim  cities  open  our  windows 
upon  flashing  waves,  and  golden  headland,  and  purple  moor, 
and  help  us  to  hear  the  voices  of  the  mountain  and  the  sea. 
But,  besides  this,  she  can,  directly  or  by  symbolism,  enter 
into  the  vestibule  of  theology,  and  give  us  a  very  gospel, 
made  more  eloquent  by  form  and  color.  I  need  hardly 
remind  you  what  glorious  work  has  thus  been  done  by  Art 
from  the  days  of  Bezaleel  and  Aholiab  until  now:  by  the 
humble  decorators  of  the  Catacombs;  by  the  builders  of 
those  living  symbols  of  the  faith,  and  poems  in  stone,  our 
great  Gothic  cathedrals;  by  the  painters  of  Italy,  and 
Spain,  and  Germany,  and  the  Netherlands;  by  Giotto,  and 
Leonardo,  and  Carpaccio,  and  Luini,  and  Tintoret.  The 
high  thunderings  of  Savonarola  have  been  hushed  for  cen- 
turies, but  Fra  Angelico  still  speaks  to  us' of  heaven.  Who 
that  has  seen  Murillo's  "Prodigal  Son "  does  not  enter 
more  vividly  into  the  heart  of  the  parable?  Has  the  awful 
"  Crucifixion "  of  Velasquez  never  brought  more  deeply 
home  to  us  the  pathos  of  the  world's  central  tragedy?  Was 
it  not  such  a  picture  at  Diisseldorf,  with  the  words  beneath 

it,— 

"  I  did  all  this  for  thee : 
What  hast  thou  done  for  Me?" 

which  first  inspired  Count  Zinzendorf  with  the  holy  self- 
devotion  which  brought  forth  fruit  in  the  Moravian  Broth- 
ers? Can  we  estimate  the  effects  produced  on  holy  and 
imaginative  souls  by  directly  religious  pictures,  from  the 
Madonnas  of  Raphael  down  to  such  great  conceptions  of 
our  own  day  as  Holman  Hunt's  "Light  of  the  World"  or 
"Shadow  of  the  Cross"?  Again,  have  not  multitudes  of 


ART. 


177 


souls  been  taught  by  the  unambiguous  symbolism  of  such 
pictures  as  Albrecht  Diirer's  "Knight  and  Death,"  or 
Raphael's  "Knight's  Dream,"  or  Millet's  "Angelus"  or 
the  "Sower"? 

And  of  this  high  religious  symbolism,  even  in  these 
days,  we  have  had  superb  examples.  Let  me  mention  two 
examples  of  this  by  our  great  painter,  Mr.  Watts.  One 
of  them  enriched  the  Royal  Academy  some  years  ago.  It 
was  the  "Death  of  Cain."  On  the  rock,  dying,  his  eyes 
half-closed,  his  hair  white  as  snow,  his  mighty  limbs  re- 
laxed, lies  the  first  man  that  was  born  into  the  world,  who 
was,  also,  alas!  the  first  murderer.  He  has  dragged  himself 
to  a  neglected  weed-grown  altar.  It  is  the  old  altar  of 
Abel,  and  thereon  he  is  offering  all  that  he  can  offer, — 
himself  in  willing,  remorseful  self-sacrifice.  Agony  and 
despair  convulse  his  dying  features;  but  his  guardian  angel 
pleads  for  him  to  the  lowering  and  stormy  heavens, — 
pleads  for  him,  and  not  in  vain.  For  the  lurid  menace  of 
the  storm  has  spent  its  fury,  the  lightning  flickers  in  the 
distance  like  a  frustrate  demon,  and  through  the  darkened 
heavens  a  ray  of  mercy  is  gleaming  down  over  the  aged 
murderer's  head.  Is  not  that  picture  a  vivid  sermon  that 
without  reparation  and  restitution  —  above  all,  without  the 
willing  and  total  sacrifice  of  self  —  we  cannot  please  God? 
But,  since  the  sacrifice  of  self  is  ever  a  hard  and  painful 
lesson,  the  same  painter  has  tried  in  another  picture  to 
teach  us  never  to  despair.  It  is  a  picture  called  "Hope." 
She  is  seated  on  the  world,  where  she  is  needed  most.  She 
is  blind,  for  Hope  must  walk  by  faith,  and  not  by  sight; 
but  she  listens  intently  to  the  strains  of  her  own  harp. 
Alas!  string  after  string  of  her  harp  has  snapped.  But  one 
string  is  left:  if  that  snaps,  there  is  no  music  more.  Will 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

that  string  also  break?  If  Hope  have  only  an  earthly  harp, 
it  will;  but,  if  her  harp  be  divine,  it  will  never  break,  and 
all  the -silver  chords,  restrung,  shall  ring  forth,  in  perfect 
diapason,  the  music  of  the  spheres.  It  is  a  lesson  deeply 
needed  by  the  sad  and  suffering  world.  The  yearnings  of 
Pagan  mythology  might  have  taught  us  the  same  lesson  in 
the  legend  of  Pandora.  The  prophet  taught  it  when  he 
said,  "Fly  unto  the  stronghold,  ye  prisoners  of  hope."  St. 
Peter  taught  it  most  plainly  of  all  when  he  wrote,  "We 
are  saved  by  hope,"  and  prayed  for  his  converts  that  the 
God  of  hope  might  "fill  them  with  joy  and  peace  and  hope 
in  believing."  And  thus,  my  friends,  Art,  too,  has  her 
gospel,  the  gospel  of  hope,  her  interpretation  of  the  blessed 
gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.  She  adds  to  the  innocent 
brightness  of  this  world:  —  and,  if  we  ask  her  of  the  next, 
she  sings, — 

"  Waft  of  soul's  wing, — 
What  lies  above  ? 
Sunshine  and  love, 
Sky-blue  and  spring !  " 

And  if  she  can  thus,  in  this  world,  pour  fresh  glory  on 
things  already  glorious  and  "add  sunlight  to  daylight,  by 
making  the  happy  happier";  and  can  also  uplift  at  least  one 
little  corner  of  that  curtain  which  hides  the  things  unseen, 
and  reveal  one  glimpse  of  those  unimaginable  glories  and 
melodies  "which  neither  eye  hath  seen  nor  ear  hath  heard," 
—  did  I  not  rightly  bestow  on  her  the  title  of  a  Teacher  of 
Mankind  ? 

I  have  said,  of  course,  but  a  small  part  of  what  might 
be  said  of  her  high  and  beneficent  activity.  I  have  not 
spoken  of  the  application  of  Art  to  industrial  purposes; 
nothing  of  the  simple  decorative  skill  by  which  she  can 


ART. 


179 


add  grace  and  loveliness  to  the  surroundings  of  common 
life;  nothing  of  her  power  to  refine,  to  elevate,  to  brighten, 
not  only  the  palace  of  the  noble,  but  the  cottage  of  the 
poor;  nothing  of  the  general  element  of  pleasure  and  hap- 
piness which  she  adds  to  our  often  troubled  life.  For  I 
have  shown  that  the  skill  of  Art  is  an  inspiration;  I  have 
shown  her  essential  aim,  and  her  indefeasible  interest  as  an 
expression  of  the  soul;  I  have  spoken  of  her  personal  and 
her  historic  function;  and  proved  that  Art  may  be  a  prophet 
of  God  in  her  interpretation  of  Life,  in  her  interpretation 
of  Nature,  in  her  services  to  Humanity,  and  in  her  services 
to  Religion,  by  which  she  makes  both  Humanity  and  Nature 
revelations  of  the  Divine.  In  her  highest  reach,  as  a  Chris- 
tian scholar  has  pointed  out,  she  reveals  the  unattainable; 
she  is  the  interpretation  of  beauty  in  life  under  the  light 
of  the  Incarnation.  What  the  old  Greek  passion  for  Art 
lost  by  sensuousness,  Christian  Art  gives  back  to  us  bathed 
in  heaven;  not  only  showing  us 

"  The  beauty,  and  the  wonder,  and  the  power,  the  shapes  of  things, 
Their  colours,  lights  and  shades, 
Changes,  surprises, —  and  God  made  it  all?"  — 

but  revealing  to  us  something  of  the  grandeur  of  our  own 
nature,  and  of  that  Eternal  Home  where  He,  for  whose 
Second  Coming  we  yearn,  whose  Incarnation  we  soon  shall 
once  more  celebrate,  has  taken  the  Form  of  Man  into  the 
very  midst  of  the  great  White  Throne  of  God. 


BIOGRAPHY:    THE    TEACHERS    OF     MANKIND. 

"  He  will  keep  the  feet  of  his  saints,  and  the  wicked  shall  be  silent  in  dark- 
ness; for  by  strength  siall  no  man  prevail." —  i  SAM.  ii.  9. 

"For  the  Son  of  Man  is  not  come  to  destroy  men's  lives,  but  to  save  them." 
ST.  LUKE  ix.  56. 

I  HAVE  tried  at  different  times  to  set  forth  the  truth  that 
God  speaks  to  us  in  many  voices;  and  that,  though  those 
voices  differ  in  the  clearness  and  fulness  of  their  message, 
yet  their  message  is,  in  its  great  main  features,  one  and 
the  same.  In  this  way,  I  have  spoken  of  the  Bible,  and  of 
Art,  and  of  History  as  Teachers  of  Mankind.  Biography, 
the  lives  of  particular  men,  forms  another  great  part  of 
that  divine  revelation  which  comes  to  us  in  many  parts 
and  many  manners,  but  all  to  confirm  and  to  emphasize 
what  God  hath,  in  these  last  days,  spoken  unto  us  by  His 
Son. 

True  it  is  that  the  few  only  leave  any  personal  record  of 
themselves  in  the  annals  of  the  world.  Most  of  us  become, 
in  an  incredibly  short  time,  as  though  we  had  never  been. 
Few,  for  instance,  can  tell  you  anything  about  their 
own  grandparents.  The  very  gravestones  of  men  are  very 
soon  forgotten  and  undecipherable.  In  less  than  one  life- 
time the  creeping  wave  of  oblivion  overtakes  us  all  except 
a  few.  And  yet  there  is  no  man  or  woman  but  has  left  at 
least  some  sand-grain  of  bright  or  of  bitter  experience  upon 
the  shores  of  time.  Infinitesimal  as  our  contribution  may 
seem  to  be,  it  is  part  of  the  great  human  heritage  of  good 
or  of  evil.  "In  our  momentary  passage  between  the  two 


BIOGRAPHY:    THE   TEACHERS  OF  MANKIND.  :8i 

eternities  we  have  deserved  the  blessings  or  the  curses  of 
all  time."  The  wretched  sot,  who  has  made  his  life  a  de- 
gradation and  his  home  a  hell,  has  injured  all  mankind  as 
well  as  himself.  The  cell  of  the  felon  and  the  grave  of 
the  suicide  poison  the  atmosphere  of  the  world.  And,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  old  woman  in  a  back  street  who  has 
lived  honestly  and  virtuously  has  helped,  in  her  own  dim 
sphere  or  unrecorded  place,  to  make  better  the  general  life 
of  all  the  family  of  man. 

But,  for  our  warning  or  our  example,  the  careers  of 
all  are  not  forgotten.  We  may  read  the  records  of  many 
thousands  of  human  lives.  God  teaches  us  by  their  exam- 
ples. Being  dead,  they  yet  speak.  The  Bible  is  full  of 
biographies.  In  those  lives  God  illustrates  for  us  in  the 
concrete  what  He  had  enjoined  upon  us  in  the  abstract. 
He  teaches  us  why  He  laid  down  the  laws  of  "Thou  shalt 
not"  and  "Thou  shalt."  He  shows  us  that  those  prohibi- 
tions and  commands  are  not  the  offspring  of  arbitrary  will, 
but  of  abiding  love,  seeing  that  the  violation  of  them  is 
ruin,  and  the  obedience  to  them  peace.  The  moral  wisdom 
with  which  God  inspired  the  Greeks  expressed  itself  in 
exquisite  allegories.  The  Harpies  are  the  symbols  of 
avenging  cares  and  retributive  remorse.  The  Sirens  are 
the  symbols  of  seductive  pleasure,  ending  in  hideous  death. 
But  God  taught  His  chosen  people  more  by  actual  events 
than  by  poetic  images.  To  them  facts  were  God's  words, 
and  contained  a  revelation  which  he  who  ran  might  read. 
And  those  facts  are  recorded  for  our  instruction.  He 
inspires,  He  elevates,  He  warns  us  by  real  examples. 
Abraham,  the  friend  of  God;  Isaac,  the  prayerful  and 
thoughtful;  Joseph,  the  youth  strong  in  virtue;  Moses,  the 
mighty  deliverer;  Joshua,  the  brave  soldier;  Hezekiah  and 


lS2  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Josiah,  the  faithful  kings;  the  dauntless  Isaiah;  the  perse- 
cuted Jeremiah;  John  the  Baptist,  the  torch  of  reformation; 
Paul,  the  unwearying  missionary;  John,  the  evangelist  of 
love, —  are  they  not  speaking  types,  living  parables,  of  all 
that  is  noble,  unselfish,  and  wise?  And  the  lives  of  Balaam, 
who  tried  to  serve  God  and  Mammon;  of  Esau,  the  profane; 
of  Eli,  the  weak  father;  of  Absalom,  the  bad  son;  of  Re- 
hoboam,  the  headstrong;  of  Ahitophel,  the  treacherous;  of 
Manasseh,  the  apostate ;  of  Judas,  the  traitor ;  of  Ananias  and 
Sapphira,  who  lied  to  God, —  are  they  not  as  beacon-lights 
to  warn  us  from  the  wrecking  shores?  And  these  exam- 
ples, these  warnings,  are  continued  age  after  age.  Have ' 
you  to  fight  against  strong  temptations?  Read  the  life  of 
Antony.  Have  you  boldly  to  rebuke  vice?  Read  the  life 
of  Savonarola.  Have  you  to  "  wake  a  greedy  age  to  nobler 
deeds  "?  Read  the  lives  of  Luther  and  of  Wesley.  Would 
you  see  the  picture  of  a  faithful  pastor?  You  will  find  it 
in  the  lives  of  Oberlin  or  Felix  Neff.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  you  would  assure  yourself  of  the  awful  catastrophe  and 
conflagration  which  follow  on  sinful  lives,  read  the  history 
of  Tiberius,  of  Nero,  of  Alexander  VI.,  of  Francis  Spiera, 
of  Carr,  Earl  of  Somerset,  of  Judge  Jeffreys.  The  impe- 
rial purple,  the  success  in  war,  the  triple  tiara  of  the  pope- 
dom,  the  earl's  coronet,  the  judge's  ermine,  saved  not  any 
one  of  them  from  wretchedness  and  infamy.  "Once," 
says  a  great  novelist,  "I  had  the  opportunity  of  contem- 
plating near  at  hand  an  example  of  the  results  produced  by 
domestic  treachery.  No  golden  halo  of  fiction  was  about 
this  example.  I  saw  it  bare  and  real.  I  saw  a  mind 
degraded  by  perfidious  deception,  and  a  body  depraved  by 
the  infectious  influence  of  the  vice-polluted  soul.  I  did 
not  now  regret  what  I  had  suffered  from  this  spectacle,  for 


BIOGRAPHY:   THE   TEACHERS  OF  MANKIND. 


183 


the  recollection  of  it  acted  as  a  most  wholesome  antidote 
to  temptation.  It  inscribed  on  my  reason  the  conviction 
that  unlawful  pleasure  is  delusive  and  envenomed  pleasure; 
its  hollowness  disappoints  at  the  time,  its  poison  cruelly 
tortures  afterwards,  its  effects  deprave  for  ever."  Yes! 
There  is  no  teaching  more  plain  than  that  of  human  lives. 
And  let  us,  above  all,  thank  God  for  the  infinite  blessing  of 
one  all-perfect,  all-divine  example,  for  the  life  of  Christ 
on  earth,  as  a  light  to  our  feet  and  a  lamp  unto  our  paths! 
If  we  would  know  that  which  renders  all  other  knowledge 
superfluous,  let  us  study  with  all  our  hearts  the  one  sinless 
life  of  the  only  Perfect  Man. 

Of  course,  in  these  few  moments,  I  can  but  touch  on 
the  outermost  fringe  of  such  a  subject;  and  your  own  fur- 
ther meditations  may  well  suggest  to  you  other  and  better 
lessons.  Yet  let  me  turn  one  leaf  or  two  of  God's  Bible 
of  facts;  let  me  mention  one  or  two  of  the  multitudinous 
truths  which  Biography  impresses  on  us,  and  in  which 
it  confirms  abundantly  the  lessons  of  the  other  books 
of  God. 

And,  first,  we  learn  that  one  anchor  holds,  and  one 
only,— trust  in  God.  If  you  rely  on  any  other  anchor,  the 
storm  will  tear  it,  and  hurl  you  in  shipwreck  on  the  shore. 
Put  not  your  trust  in  princes.  Wolsey  toiled  for  a  king, 
and  Wolsey  was  deserted  in  his  old  age.  Strafford  leaned 
on  a  king's  faith,  and  Strafford  was  .abandoned ^  to  the 
scaffold.  Huss  trusted  to  an  emperor's  pledge,  and  Huss 
was  burned  at  the  stake.  Clarendon  was  the  faithful  minis- 
ter and  kinsman  of  a  king,  and  Clarendon  was  driven  into 
exile.  Columbus  enriched  kings  with  the  wealth  of  a  new 
hemisphere,  and  Columbus  came  back  in  chains  from  the 
New  World  he  had  discovered.  Cortes  gave  them  domains 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

larger  than  all  Europe,  and  Cortes  died  in  neglect  and 
poverty.  Put  not  your  trust  in  any  child  of  man.  Even 
friends,  even  kinsmen,  may  prove  cold  and  false.  Put  not 
your  trust  in  mobs.  You  might  as  well  trust  the  troubled 
sea  whose  waters  cast  up  mire  and  dirt.  To-day  they 
will  hoot,  and  to-morrow  adore.  To-day  they  will  shout 
"  Hosanna  "  and  to-morrow  "  Crucify."  They  will  have  hur- 
ricanes of  abuse  for  men  who  advise  them  aright,  and  shouts 
of  enthusiasm  for  men  who  counsel  ruin.  Trust  in  God 
only.  Look  to  God  as  the  sole  source  of  truth.  Truth  is 
God's  only  orthodoxy.  "God,"  said  Wendell  Phillips,  "is 
the  sole  final  public  opinion."  "I  am  not  afraid  of  ma- 
jorities," said  Henry  Grattan.  "God  will  guard  His  own 
against  rank  majorities." 

Again,  Biography  teaches  us  not  only  to  trust  in 
God  alone,  but  also  to  fear  Him  only.  No  true  man  who 
can  say,  "The  Lord  is  on  my  side,"  will  fear  what  man 
can  do  to  him.  What  a  supreme  support  and  comfort  is  it 
for  those  who  have  to  face,  as  their  Lord  had  to  face,  the 
malice  and  the  insolence  of  the  world  —  to  know  that  one 
approving  whisper  of  conscience  more  than  atones  for  the 
roar  of  men!  To  be  depreciated,  sneered  at,  vilified,  to  see 
all  services  lost  in  a  Dead  Sea  of  ingratitude,  —  well  the 
humblest  man,  whose  lot  is  such,  may  take  courage  when 
he  sees  that  this  has  been  the  lot  of  all  the  greatest  bene- 
factors of  the  world.  "I  have  loved  righteousness,"  said 
a  grand  old  pope,  "and  hated  iniquity,  and  therefore  I  die 
in  exile."  The  world  without  God  is  a  liar.  Joseph  was 
accused  of  adultery.  Jeremiah  was  imprisoned  as  a  traitor. 
Of  John  the  Baptist  they  said  that  he  had  a  devil.  St. 
Paul  was  charged  with  guile  and  uncleanness.  St.  John 
had  a  Diotrephes  to  prate  against  him  with  malicious  words. 


BIOGRAPHY:   THE   TEACHERS  OF  MANKIND.  ^5 

St.  Athanasius  was  accused  of  murder  and  embezzlement. 
St.  Chrysostom  had  to  face  a  storm  of  lying  calumnies. 
Luther,  Calvin,  Melanchthon,  lived  and  died  among  the  rage 
of  theologians,  and  tongues  set  on  fire  of  hell.  White- 
field  was 

"  The  very  butt  of  slander  and  the  blot 
Of  every  dart  that  slander  ever  shot." 

So  much  for  popular  judgments!  So  much  for  the  integ- 
rity and  infallibility  of  the  masses!  If  they  have  called 
the  master  of  the  house  Beelzebub,  how  much  more  they  of 
his  household!  A  gluttonous  man  and  a  wine-bibber,  a  Sa- 
maritan, a  seducer,  a  rebel, —  these  were  the  criticisms  of 
the  religious  and  the  irreligious  world  of  Him  who,  when 
He  was  reviled,  reviled  not  again,  when  He  suffered  He 
threatened  not,  but  committed  all  things  to  Him  who  judg- 
eth  righteously. 

But,  if  Biography  thus  teaches  to  face  without  fear 
the  unjust  judgments  of  our  fellow-worms,  it  teaches  us  also 
to  judge  righteous  judgment  ourselves.  A  great  writer, 
now  universally  eulogized,*  tells  us  that  in  the  days  when 
every  tongue  was  wagging  against  him,  and  when  at  the 
same  time  he  was  absolutely  assured  of  his  own  integrity 
before  God,  he  learned  the  duty  of  tender  and  sympathetic 
judgments.  "If  I,"  he  said,  "who  knew  my  own  motives 
to  be,  before  God,  so  absolutely  disinterested,  am  thus 
hated  and  reviled  in  my  own  Church,  may  it  not  be  that 
some  of  those  who  have  been  doomed  to  lifelong  and  to 
posthumous  execration  were  nevertheless  true  children  of 
God?"  Ah!  my  friends,  in  yonder  world  where  all  is 
judged  of  truly,  many  of  the  last  shall  be  first,  and  many 
of  the  first  last.  If  our  heart'  condemn  us  not,  if  we  can 
"turn  from  the  storm  without  to  the  sunshine  of  an  approv- 

*  Cardinal  Newman. 


!86  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

ing  conscience  within,"  then  that  is  all  we  need.     It  is  only 
the  good  and  the  guileless  who  can  take  this  comfort. 

"  'Tis  not  the  babbling  of  an  idle  world, 
Where  praise  and  censure  are  at  random  hurled, 
That  can  the  meanest  of  my  thoughts  control 
Or  shake  one  settled  purpose  of  my  soul : 
Free  and  at  large  might  their  wild  curses  roam 
If  all,  if  all,  alas !  were  well  at  home." 

But,  when  all  is  well  within,  the  condemnation  of  others 
shows  only  that  they  know  us  not  as  we  are  known  to  God. 
Let  us,  then,  also  learn  from  the  recorded  lives  of  men  to 
judge  others  gently  and  fairly,  lest  haply  we  be  found  fight- 
ing against  God. 

Again, —  and  this  is  a  deeply  valuable  and  needful 
lesson, —  Biography  teaches  us  to  correct  the  world's  fool- 
ish and  superficial  notions  of  success  and  failure;  it  acts  as 
a  counterpoise  to  the  estimates  of  ambition  and  of  Mam- 
mon. Who  has  failed?  Who  has  succeeded?  That  gor- 
geous criminal  who  has  amassed  wealth  by  every  sort  of 
fraud  and  meanness,  by  speculating  in  the  ruin  of  the  help- 
less, by  grinding  the  faces  of  the  poor;  to  whom  the  world 
bows  and  gives  him  its  daughters  in  marriage,  and 
makes  him  a  peer  of  the  realm;  who  has  wealth,  and  there- 
with a  heart  as  hard  as  the  nether  millstone  and  an.  ear  deaf 
as  an  adder's  to  the  cry  of  the  sorrowful, —  is  he  a  specimen 
of  success?  If  so,  from  such  success,  Good  Lord,  deliver 
us!  And  that  other  man,  who  has  sacrificed  everything 
—  place,  wealth,  power  —  to  the  call  of  duty  and  of  con- 
science; who  has  made  himself  hated  by  boldly  rebuking 
vice,  by  fearlessly  denouncing  political  and  religious  error; 
who  is  so  poor,  and  so  neglected  in  consequence,  that  it  is 
a  hard  struggle  even  to  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door, —  is  he 


BIOGRAPHY:   THE   TEACHERS  OF  MANKIND.  ^ 

one  of  your  failures?  If  so,  the  very  greatest  and  wisest 
in  all  the  world,  the  very  souls  which  have  most  enriched 
and  ennobled  it,  the  souls  without  whose  influence  it  would 
have  been  a  mass  of  putrescent  corruption,  have  failed. 
Paul,  forsaken,  beheaded  in  nameless  obscurity;  William 
Tyndale  led  from  his  damp  and  chilly  prison  to  the  stake; 
Milton,  dying  amid  darkness  and  solitude  and  evil  tongues; 
Henry  Martyn  in  a  distant  land,  perishing  alone  and  uncom- 
forted,  without  having  made  a  single  convert, —  were  these 
failures?  Ah!  "God's  heroes  are  often  the  world's 
Helots!"  They  have  wandered  about  in  sheepskins  and 
goatskins,  being  destitute,  afflicted,  tormented,  of  whom 
the  world  was  not  worthy.  Oh,  that  every  young  man  and 
young  woman  setting  out  in  life  would  learn  this:  —  that 
any  man  is  ten  times  over  a  ghastly  failure  who  being 
emperor  or  millionaire,  and  having  gained  the  whole 
world,  has  lost  his  own  soul;  and  that  he  is  a  million-fold 
success  who,  dying  poor  and  hated,  and  in  the  prison  or  on 
the  scaffold,  has  given  up  all  for  Christ's  sake  by  being 
resolutely  faithful  to  the  best  he  knows. 

Biography,  in  teaching  us  to  reverse  utterly  the 
world's  judgments  of  success  and  failure,  teaches  us  also  to 
correct  and  reverse  altogether  the  world's  estimate  of  happi- 
ness. It  is  an  old,  old  lesson,  but  one  of  those  old,  old 
lessons  which  most  men  refuse  constantly  to  learn.  Every 
bad  sophist  in  Greece  held  it  as  an  axiom  that  a  tyrant  was 
happy ;  and  Socrates  was  sneered  at  for  the  remark  that  he 
could  not  tell  whether  the  King  of  Persia  was  happy  or  not, 
because  he  knew  nothing  of  his  character.  The  oldest  Greek 
historian  tells  us  how  the  Lydian  king  ordered  Solon  to  be 
shown  over  his  treasuries,  and  then  asked  him  who  was  the 
happiest  man  he  had  ever  seen.  And  he  answered,  Not 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Croesus  but  Tellos,  the  Athenian,  who  lived  in  a  flourish- 
ing country,  and  had  good  sons,  and  died  righting  for  his 
native  land;  and  next  to  him  Cleobis  and  Bito,  whom  the 
gods  had  rewarded  for  filial  piety  by  early  death.  The 
Greek  at  least  saw  from  mere  experience  that  the  secrets  of 
happiness  are  contentment  and  a  conscience  void  of  offence; 
and  these  neither  rank  nor  wealth  can  purchase.  Content- 
ment is  an  inexhaustible  revenue,  and  peace  of  conscience 
is  a  peace  which  indeed  passeth  understanding.  Biography 
tells  us  of  many  an  unhappy  emperor,  of  many  an  unhappy 
millionaire,  of  many  an  unhappy  one  who  has  climbed  to 
the  loftiest  summits  of  human  fame;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  of  many  a  poor  monk,  of  many  a  toiling  missionary, 
of  many  a  humble  peasant,  who  would  have  echoed  the 
words  of  the  weary  king:  — 

"  I  swear  'tis  better  to  be  lowly  born, 
And  dwell  with  humble  livers  in  content, 
Than  to  be  perked  up  in  a  glistering  grief 
And  wear  a  golden  sorrow." 

Men  fear  all  sorts  of  sorrows  and  calamities;  and  to 
any  of  us,  good  or  evil,  all  sorts  of  sorrows  and  calamities 
will  surely  come.  That,  too,  is  a  lesson  which  Biography 
teaches  us, —  the  lesson  that  man  is  born  to  sorrow,  as  the 
sparks  fly  upwards;  but,  if  we  have  learned  to  obey  the  law 
of  our  conscience,  to  be  humble,  and  kind,  and  pure,  and 
honest,  and  truthful,  and  contented,  we  have  learned  a  lesson 
which  renders  life  invincible  in  its  essential  (/.*?.,  in  its 
spiritual)  beatitude.  If  there  be  one  lesson  which  is 
emphasized  more  absolutely  than  all  others  by  the  teach- 
ing of  Biography,  it  is  this  rule:  "Keep  innocency,  and  do 
the  thing  that  is  right,  for  that  shall  bring  a  man  peace  at  the 


BIOGRAPHY:   THE   TEACHERS  OF  MANKIND. 


189 


last " ;  and  this  promise  of  the  Lord  Jesus  to  all  that  love 
and  fear  Him:  "Peace  I  leave  with  you,  my  peace  I  give 
unto  you:  not  as  the  world  giveth,  give  I  unto  you."  He 
who  has  gained  this  peace  hath  life :  he  who  has  it  not, 
though  he  roll  in  wealth,  though  he  be  steeped  in  pleasure, 
though  his  ambitions  have  been  satiated  with  every  form 
of  earthly  success, —  he  who  hath  it  not  is  dead  while  he 
liveth. 


THE  PULPIT. 

"THE  True  Functions  of  the  Christian  Pulpit," — it  is 
not  an  easy  subject.  I  can  only  treat  it  fragmentarily  and 
disjointedly. 

Let  me  say  at  once  that  sermons  ought  not  by  any 
means  to  be  the  main  object  which  draws  us  to  churches. 
"Resort  to  sermons,"  says  a  wise  and  holy  poet,  "but  to 
prayer  most:  praying  is  the  end  of  preaching."  We  meet 
together,  not  chiefly  to  hear  sermons,  but,  in  the  words  of  our 
Prayer  Book,  "to  render  thanks  for  the  great  benefits  received 
at  God's  hands,  to  set  forth  His  most  worthy  praise,  to 
hear  His  most  holy  word,  and  to  ask  those  things  which  are 
requisite  and  necessary,  as  well  for  the  body  as  the  soul." 
If  no  preacher  ever  said  a  word,  there  are  many  who  many 
a  time  have  felt  those  prayers  of  our  Church  falling,  like 
the  dew  of  God,  upon  their  souls.  Yet,  while  I  do  not  put 
preaching  in  the  first  place,  I  would  strongly  deprecate  the 
vulgar  fashion  —  vulgar,  though  sanctioned  by  some  fine 
writers  —  of  sneering  at  the  very  notion  of  sermons.  Since 
the  days  when  Noah  was  a  preacher  of  righteousness,  ser- 
mons have  been  the  appointed  means  of  rebuking  vice,  of 
inspiring  effort,  of  awakening  conscience,  of  keeping  alive 
in  the  heart  the  thoughts  of  God,  the  ideal  of  temperance 
and  righteousness,  the  memory  of  death,  judgment,  and 
eternity.  It  was  in  sermons  that  Moses  taught  to  the 
Israelites,  and  to  all  mankind  forever,  the  Ten  Words  of 
the  eternal  Law.  It  was  in  sermons  that  the  prophets  of 
Israel  set  their  faces,  like  flint,  against  the  crimes  of  other 


THE  PULPIT. 


191 


nations,  and  the  manifold  apostasies  of  their  own.  It  was 
in  sermons,  under  the  open  sky,  on  the  green  hillside,  that 
He  who  spake  as  never  man  spake  revealed  to  a  surfeited 
and  guilty  world  the  beatitudes  of  the  humble,  and  the 
peacemaker,  and  the  pure  in  heart.  It  was  in  sermons  to 
little  knots  of  slaves  and  artisans  that  the  Apostle,  of  whom 
they  said  that  "his  bodily  presence  was  weak,  and  his 
speech  contemptible,"  founded  the  great  churches  of  Anti- 
och,  and  Ephesus,  and  Corinth,  and  Philippi.  It  was  by 
sermons  that  the  great  Church  Fathers  of  the  East  and  West 
undid  the  heavy  burden,  and  let  the  oppressed  go  free.  It 
was  by  sermons  that  an  Urban,  and  a  Peter  the  Hermit, 
fired  the  grand,  if  erring,  passion  of  crusading  enthusiasm. 
In  sermons  Savonarola  thrilled  the  heart  of  corrupted  Italy, 
and  snatched  her  from  the  decadence  of  a  new  Paganism. 
In  sermons  the  mighty  voice  of  Luther's  indignation  shook 
the  world.  By  sermons  the  old  Covenanters  were  fired  with 
the  stubborn  heroism  and  impetuous  valour  which  faced  and 
routed  the  cavalry  of  Claverhouse.  By  sermons  to  colliers 
and  miners,  down  whose  black  cheeks,  as  they  listened,  the 
streaming  tears  coursed  in  white,  unwonted  furrows,  Wesley 
and  Whitefield,  in  a  century  of  deepening  atheism,  kindled 
into  fresh  flame  the  embers  of  a  dying  faith.  To  sneer, 
then,  at  sermons,  as  though  they  were  all  fooling,  to  be 
ended  as  soon  as  possible,  seems  to  me  to  show  a  petulant 
ignorance  alike  of  the  facts  of  history  and  of  the  needs  of 
man.  No  one  could  of  course  deny  that  from  the  pulpit  are 
spoken  many  foolish  and  feeble  and  unprofitable  words.  It 
must  inevitably  be  so.  It  would  be  so,  just  as  inevitably, 
if  to-morrow  the  twenty  thousand  clergy  were  turned  out, 
and  their  places  supplied  by  as  many  laymen.  The  clergy 
possess  no  patent  for  unprofitableness.  They  have  no 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DA  Y. 

monopoly  of  what  is  tedious  or  commonplace.  You  find 
it  as  plentifully  in  books,  in  newspapers,  in  magazines. 
You  meet  with  it  as  plentifully  at  every  meeting,  in  every 
law  court,  in  every  parliamentary  debate.  What  wonder, 
then,  if  at  Church,  also,  you  often  hear 

"  The  same  proofs  which  not  one  text  explain, 
And  the  same  lights  where  all  things  dark  remain  "  ? 

However  low  may  be  the  standard  of  our  sermons  (and 
I  hardly  see  how  it  can  be  otherwise,  when  so  very  many  are 
required  of  us),  they  are,  at  least  intellectually,  on  a  level 
with,  and  morally  (perhaps)  far  higher  than,  nine-tenths  of 
the  every-day  reading  in  which  the  masses  of  every  rank 
delight.  Very  few  among  men  can  be  great,  or  wise,  or 
clever.  Most  of  us  are  made  of  very  ordinary  clay.  Not  to 
one  man  in  ten  thousand,  barely  perhaps  to  one  man  in 
a  generation,  is  it  granted  to  stand  forth  like  a  heavenly 
archer,  and  hurl  into  the  dark  heart  arrows  of  lightnings; 
to  wield,  with  no  feeble  hand,  the  Word  of  God  as  that 
which  indeed  it  is, —  a  sword  to  pierce,  a  flame  to  scathe, 
a  hammer  to  dash  in  pieces  the  flinty  heart; 

"  To  preach  as  one  who  ne'er  should  preach  again, 
And  as  a  dying  man  to  dying  men." 

To  most  of  us  God  has  given  not  ten  talents,  but  only 
one,  and  that  only  in  an  earthen  vessel ;  and  not  only  may 
our  powers  be  very  limited,  but  depression,  sickness,  end- 
less work,  never-ceasing  worry,  may  secretly  be  killing  us. 
All  the  more  bitterly,  perhaps  the  more  faithfully,  we  do  our 
duty;  while  often  the  laity,  who  bind  these  heavy  burdens 
so  carelessly  upon  our  shoulders,  are  not  so  much  as  touch- 
ing those  burdens  with  one  of  their  fingers.  The  clergy 


THE  PULPIT. 


193 


are  forced  to  do  nine-tenths  of  that  work  of  the  Church 
evangelistic,  of  the  Church  militant,  of  the  Church  benef~ 
icent  which  is  not  more  their  work  than  it  is  yours. 
While  they  have  to  beg  for  all  necessary  charities,  while 
the  burdens  of  the  debts,  and  cares,  and  maintenance  of 
parish,  and  mission  rooms,  and  all  forms  of  work  for  the 
poor,  fall  on  them,  often  amid  deep  poverty,  and  with  hearts 
aching  with  anxiety  for  the  future  of  those  they  love, —  it 
is  a  little  too  much  to  expect  of  them  a  rushing  fountain 
of  eloquence,  an  inexhaustible  supply  of  "thoughts  that 
breathe  and  words  that  burn."  And  yet,  with  all  its  draw- 
backs and  all  its  imperfections,  I  venture  to  call  the 
Christian  pulpit  one  of  the  most  necessary  and  one  of  the 
most  blessed  of  all  Christian  institutions. 

First,  let  me  ask  you  to  notice  that  it  is  an  institution 
distinctively,  and  almost  exclusively,  Christian.  During 
long  centuries,  over  the  vast  domains  of  heathendom,  any 
regular  Pagan  pulpit  was  a  thing  almost  unknown.  Here 
and  there,  once  in  a  hundred  years,  rose  in  the  empires  of 
Greece  and  Rome  some  great  moralist,  some  true  philoso- 
pher, like 

"  That  pure  soul  hid  in  a  satyr's  form, 

Which  shone  beneath  the  laurels  day  by  day, 
And,  clad  with  burning  faith  in  truth  and  right, 
Doubted  men's  doubts  away  " ;  — 

some  Socrates  or  Plato,  some  Cicero  or  Seneca,  some 
slave  like  Epictetus  or  emperor  like  Marcus  Aurelius  —  in 
China  a  Confucius  or  a  Meng  Tseu,  in  Hindostan  a  Buddha, 
in  Persia  a  Zoroaster  —  whose  words  often  reached  the  few 
alone.  But  amid  pompous  ceremonials,  and  bloody  sacri- 
fices, and  terrified  devotions  there  was  no  regular  institution 
of  preaching  meant  to  strengthen  the  weak,  to  console  the 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

sorrowful,  to  enlighten  the  blind,  to  heal  the  broken- 
hearted, to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor.  There  was 
hardly  even  a  Jewish  pulpit.  The  Priests  offered  their  daily 
sacrifices  in  the  temple  till  it  became  like  one  vast  shambles, 
and  its  marble  pavements  swam  in  the  blood  of  lambs  and 
bulls;  but  of  their  regular  teaching  we  hardly  read  till 
Ezra's  times,  and  even  then  it  was  more  external  than  spir- 
itual, more  ceremonial  than  moral.  The  Jews  had  indeed 
their  Prophets, —  men  who,  in  their  magnificent  courage, 
fearlessly  rebuked  vice,  and  received  back,  in  anguish  and 
martyrdom,  the  bitter  tribute  of  its  detestation.  But  the 
days  came,  and  often  came,  when  either  "there  was  no 
prophet  more,"  or  "the  prophets  prophesied  falsely,  and  the 
priests  bore  rule  by  their  means,  and  the  people  loved  to 
have  it  so."  But  in  Christianity  there  has  been  from  the 
very  first  the  regular  institution  of  preaching;  —  a  pulpit 
varying  in  external  surroundings  as  those  of  Christ,  who 
made  of  His  pulpits  splendid  temple,  or  crowded  syna- 
gogue, or  green  hill,  or  common  house,  or  boat  upon  the 
silver  lake;  and  varying  in  power  and  substance  from  His 
pathos  of  appeal  to  weeping  sinners  to  the  burning  voice 
of  His  prophecies  and  the  blighting  flash  of  His  invective. 
The  pulpits  of  Christendom  have  been  everywhere.  Alike 
in  subterranean  catacombs,  on  bleak  mountain  moors,  in 
sea-worn  caves,  in  huts  of  the  forest  or  the  bush,  in  iron 
mission-rooms  of  crowded  slums,  and  in  basilicas  glowing 
with  gold  and  marble,  have  Christian  ministers  rebuked, 
comforted,  exhorted,  Christian  men, —  now  with  majestic 
eloquence  and  terrible  denunciation,  now  (and  more  often) 
in  gentle  ministrations,  and  in  homeliest  words  of  instruc- 
tion and  appeal. 

Look  for  a  moment  at  the  legacies  of  the  Christian  pul- 


THE  PULPIT. 


195 


pits  even  in  their  mere  literary  aspect,  and  will  any  one 
among  you  venture  to  say  that  the  institution  has  been 
profitless  or  vain? 

Would  not  the  wealth  of  human  thought  be  greatly 
impoverished  if  you  emptied  from  its  treasure-house  what 
Christian  men  have  spoken  from  the  pulpit  to  Christian 
men?  Think  of  the  manliness  of  Ambrose,  the  spirituality 
of  Augustine,  the  fervour  of  Bernard!  Would  it  be  noth- 
ing to  lose  from  the  works  of  the  Eastern  Fathers  the 
stately  rhetoric  of  Gregory,  the  splendid  passion  of  Chrys- 
ostom?  Would  not  the  man  stamp  himself  as  a  barbarian 
who  in  French  literature  could  not  value  the  majesty  of 
Bossuet,  the  tenderness  of  Fenelon,  the  grace  and  power 
of  Massillon  and  Bourdaloue?  Could  the  student  of  Eng- 
lish literature  forego  the  plainness  of  Latimer,  the  poetry 
of  Donne,  the  flashing  wit  of  South,  the  radiant  imagery 
of  Jeremy  Taylor,  the  depth  of  Butler,  the  lucidity  of 
Tillotson,  the  saintliness  of  Wilson,  the  massiveness  of 
Barrow,  or  even,  in  our  own  memory,  the  strength  of 
Arnold,  the  thoughtfulness  of  Robertson,  the  cultured 
grace  of  Henry  Melvill?  Could  you  select  a  greater, 
could  you  even  select  an  equal  amount  of  noble  thought 
and  matchless  expression  from  the  collected  eloquence  of 
the  platform,  the  Senate,  or  the  bar? 

And  yet  the  least  and  lowest  claim  which  any  sermon 
could  put  forward  would  be  a  claim  to  rhetorical  skill  or 
literary  finish.  To  charm  the  ear  or  the  mind  is  but  a 
fraction  of  what  the  pulpit  desires  to  do.  Its  glory  is  far 
more  in  the  modesty  of  fearful  duty  than  in  "the  rattling 
tongue  of  saucy  and  audacious  eloquence."  The  desire  of 
every  true  preacher  is,  not  to  soar  in  dazzling  flights  of 
eloquence,  as  when  an  eagle  catches  the  sunlight  "on 


!^6  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

every  varying  plume  " ;  not  to  aim  at  those  burning  mes- 
sages which  he  alone  can  utter  whose  lips  the  seraph  has 
purged  with  the  coal  from  off  the  altar;  still  less  to  revel 
in  average  fluency  and  plausible  facility.  Far  rather  would 
he  cast  in  his  lot  with  such  a  man  as  Chaucer  describes, — 

"  He  waited  for  no  pompe  ne  reverence, 
He  maked  him  no  spiced  conscience ; 
But  Christes  lore,  and  his  apostles  twelve, 
He  taught,  but  first  he  folwed  it  himselve  "; 

or  as  he  of  whom  Goldsmith  speaks, — 

"  At  church,  with  meek  and  unaffected  grace, 
His  looks  adorned  the  venerable  place; 
Truth  from  his  lips  prevailed  with  double  sway, 
And  fools  who  came  to  scoff  remained  to  pray." 

The  chief  work,  perhaps,  of  the  pulpit  is  done  by  the  holy, 
quiet,  unambitious  words  of  unknown  men ;  of  pastors  who 
lived  in  humble  homes .  under  the  shadow  of  their  church- 
yard elms ;  of  men  who  were  known  and  loved  in  their  par- 
ish lanes,  who  did  not  strive  nor  cry,  nor  were  their  voices 
heard  in  the  streets,  but  who  toiled  on  in  unremembered 
faithfulness,  uttering  only 

"  The  golden  mean  and  quiet  flow 
Of  words  which  soften  hatred,  temper  strife." 

The  best,  the  widest  work  of  the  pulpit  is  mainly  their 
work;  and  never,  I  believe,  will  it  be  fully  known,  until 
the  secrets  of  all  hearts  shall  be  revealed,  on  the  one  hand, 
how  many  souls  have  been  blessed  and  saved  by  this  means 
of  grace,  and,  on  the  other,  when  men  have  either  despised 
it  altogether,  or  tolerated  it  only  on  the  condition  that  their 


THE  PULPIT. 


IQ/ 


prophets  should  say  to  them  smooth  things  and  prophesy  de- 
ceits, to  what  loss  of  their  gentlest  and  noblest  qualities, 
to  what  total  atrophy  of  their  spiritual  life,  to  what  fatal 
dominance  of  their  worst  passions  and  poorest  weaknesses, 
men  have  persuaded  themselves  to  despise  this  aid  to  holi- 
ness, and  abrogate  this  ordinance  of  God. 

This,  then, —  edification, —  is  the  humble  but  immense 
and  primary  function  of  the  Christian  pulpit.  It  is,  as  St.' 
Augustine  said,  "docere,  flectere,  movere," — "to  teach,  to' 
bend,  to  stir  up," — to  arrest  the  careless,  to  strengthen  the 
weak,  to  lift  up  the  fallen,  to  bring  wanderers  home.  But, 
though  it  is  impossible  in  a  short  time  to  prove  how  much 
sermons  have  effected  in  broad,  measurable  influence,  partly 
by  that  spirit  which  we  are  forbidden  to  quench,  partly  in 
those  prophesyings  (or  quiet  daily  and  weekly  instructions) 
which  we  are  forbidden  to  despise,  I  may  point  out  other 
functions  which  from  age  to  age  they  have  worthily  ful- 
filled. I  say,  then,  that  a  second  function  of  the  pulpit 
has  been  the  maintenance  of  liberty.  Look  how  often  it 
has  faced  arbitrary  tyranny,  and  made  it  quail.  Look  at 
St.  Basil  pleading  again  and  again  for  those  oppressed  by 
the  civil  power,  and  standing  undaunted  in  his  church  at 
Caesarea  before  Valens,  the  persecuting  emperor.  Look  at 
Chrysostom,  sheltering  in  his  cathedral  sanctuary  his 
fallen  enemy  Eutropius  against  all  the  legions  and  all  the 
rage  of  Arcadius  and  Eudoxia.  I  could  instance  many  who, 
like  Elijah  before  Jezebel,  John  the  Baptist  before  Herod, 
Paul  before  Nero,  have  "stood  before  kings  and  not  been 
afraid."  The  "frown  of  the  threatening  tyrant  "  has  never 
daunted  the  true  preacher  of  righteousness,  from  the  days 
when  Ignatius  confronted  Trajan,  or  Huss  drew  the  hot 
blush  to  the  cheek  of  Sigismund,  or  Luther  faced  Charles 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

V.  at  the  diet  of  Worms,  down  to  those  when  the  seven 
bishops  dared  the  fury  of  James  II.,  and  the  London  clergy 
in  a  body  refused  to  read  his  declaration.  The  one  typical 
instance  of  such  courage  is  Ambrose  denouncing  from  the 
pulpit,  and  repelling  from  his  church,  the  brave  but  chol- 
eric Theodosius,  till  he  should  have  done  public  penance 
for  his  guilt  in  the  massacre  of  Thessalonica.  In  thus  re- 
buking tyranny,  Ambrose  splendidly  asserted  the  superiority 
of  the  spiritual  power  over  all  material  force.  The  func- 
tion is  needed  to  this  day.  To-day  the  multitude  are 
kings,  and  it  requires  a  firmer  courage  to  arraign  their 
follies  and  rebuke  their  sins  than  it  ever  did  to  beard  a 
tyrant.  Woe  to  us  if  through  our  cowardice  that  function 
be  unfulfilled! 

And  a  third  function  of  the  Christian  pulpit  is  the 
defence  of  the  oppressed.  At  a  very  early  period  after  the 
victory  of  Christianity  bishops  became  the  protectors  of  the 
poor.  If  a  wrong  was  done,  appeal  was  made  to  them ;  if  a 
province  was  overtaxed,  it  was  they  who  pleaded  for  remis- 
sion. Was  an  innocent  person  attacked?  they  gave  him 
sanctuary.  Was  a  city  doomed  to  imperial  vengeance?  they 
stood  forth  as  its  ambassadors.  If  a  host  of  barbarians  was 
on  the  march,  they  met  and  obtained  mercy  from  the  brutal 
chieftain;  if  a  defeat  had  crippled  the  resources  of  the 
empire,  they  melted  down  even  the  sacred  vessels  of  gold 
and  silver  to  ransom  ithe  prisoners.  They  gathered  the 
lepers  into  their  hospitals  and  tended  them;  they  received 
strangers  into  their  hospices,  and  washed  their  feet ;  they 
gave  a  new  home  to  the  orphan  and  pleaded  the  widow's 
cause.  Often,  in  the  severe  famines  of  those  days,  when 
the  rich,  in  pitiless  greed,  locked  up  their  granaries,  it  was 
the  eloquence  of  a  Basil,  a  Chrysostom,  an  Ambrose  which 


THE  PULPIT. 

forced  them  open.  It  was  the  same  through  the  Middle 
Ages,  where  it  was  in  the  Church  alone  that  the  peasant 
could  rise  so  high  as  to  set  his  foot  even  on  the  necks  of 
kings,  and  where  no  arm  but  that  of  the  preacher  was  strong 
enough  to  beat  down  the  mailed  hand  of  the  baron  if  it  was 
uplifted  to  strike  his  serf.  Is  it  otherwise  now?  In  how 
many  parishes  is  the  parson  the  poor  man's  only  protector, 
and  only  friend?  By  whom  are  nine-tenths  of  the  sums  got 
together,  which,  day  by  day,  and  year  by  year,  are  expended 
on  the  sick,  the  suffering,  and  the  poor? 

A  fourth  great  and  permanent  function  of  the  Chris- 
tian pulpit  is  the  reformation  of  morals.  In  age  after  age 
have  preachers  been  as  an  incarnate  conscience  to  guilty 
nations.  When  Rome  and  Antioch  and  Constantinople 
were  sinking  into  a  merely  nominal  and  disputative  Chris- 
tianity—  when  a  cruel  and  callous  luxury  rioted  in  its  own 
selfishness  while  the  poor  were  dying  at  its  gates  —  read  with 
what  scathing  sarcasm  the  selfish  are  reproved  in  the  im- 
passioned harangues  of  a  Gregory  and  a  Chrysostom.  In 
the  corrupted  Florence  of  the  fifteenth  century  what  moved 
men's  hearts  like  the  voice  of  Savonarola?  In  the  cor- 
rupted England  of  the  sixteenth  and  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury think  what  moral  amelioration  was  caused  by  the  voices 
of  a  Latimer,  a  Wesley,  and  a  Whitefield.  In  the  nine- 
teenth century  think  how  the  sermons  of  Dr.  Arnold  tended 
to  regenerate  the  spirit  of  public  schools.  Never  had  any 
nation  more  need  than  now  for  such  voices.  It  costs  some- 
thing to  utter  them.  He  who  denounces  the  vices  of  so- 
ciety, he  who  tears  the  mask  from  the  sly  and  distorted 
features  of  insincere  religionism,  he  who  makes  a  stand 
against  prurient  gossip,  and  callous  self-indulgence,  and 
mean  slander,  and  fashionable  lies,  and  drunkenness  and 


2QO  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

debauchery — let  him  try  it,  and  he  will  experience  in 
his  own  person  how  the  secular  world,  and  the  so-called 
religious  world,  can  still  slander,  and  lie,  and  persecute. 
If  we  prefer  to  be  flattered  rather  than  abused ;  if  we  say, 
Peace,  peace,  when  there  is  no  peace;  if  we  leave  unstirred 
the  slimy  iridescence  of  stagnant  and  corrupt  societies;  if 
we  daub  tottering  walls  with  our  untempered  mortar,  what 
else  are  we  doing  than  to  sell  Christ  for  human  approval? 
If  so,  "like  people,  like  priest"!  And,  if  that  be  ever  so, 
woe  to  us!  Woe  to  us,  and  double  woe  to  you! 

Once  more,  a  fifth  function  of  the  Christian  pulpit  is 
the  purification  of  corrupt  religions.  It  is  the  tendency 
of  religion  to  go  corrupt,  like  Israel's  manna,  if  it  be  not 
daily  gathered  pure  from  the  fields  of  Holy  Writ.  Human 
inventions,  and  will-worship,  and  ambition,  and  the  thrust- 
ing of  all  kinds  of  intermediaries  between  the  soul  and  its 
free,  direct,  immediate,  unimpeded  access  to  God,  these 
have  to  be  averted.  So  did  Isaiah:  "The  ancient  and 
honorable,  he  is  the  head ;  and  the  prophet  who  speaketh 
lies,  he  is  the  tail."  "Ye  serpents,  ye  generation  of 
vipers  "  —  so  spake  the  rude  Baptist  to  the  religious  classes. 
"In  vain  do  they  worship  me,  teaching  for  doctrines  the 
commandments  of  men "  —so  spake  Christ  to  the  Pharisees. 
"  Stand  fast  in  the  freedom  wherewith  God  hath  freed  you, 
and  be  not  entangled  again  in  the  yoke  of  bondage  "  —  so  said 
St.  Paul.  And  Isaiah  they  sawed  in  sunder;  and  John 
they  beheaded;  and  Paul  they  tried  to  murder;  and  they 
crucified  the  Lord  of  glory.  Swim  with  the  stream,  as 
every  preacher,  like  all  other  men,  is  tempted  to  do,  and 
you  will  glide  delightfully  along.  Strike  out  manfully 
against  the  current,  and  you  will  be  buffeted  with  drowning 
waves.  Huss  they  burnt.  Luther  and  the  English  re- 


THE  PULPIT, 


2O I 


formers  they  cursed,  and  still  curse,  like  dogs.  Wesley  and 
Whitefield 

"  Stood  pinnacled  on  infamy's  high  stage, 
And  bore  the  pelting  scorn  of  half  an  age." 

Yet  what  would  religion  now  have  been  if  no  man  had 
stood  up  to  expose  the  abominations  which  in  age  after 
age  have  striven  to  conceal  themselves  in  her  most  sacred 
shrines? 

I  say  that  these  functions,  every  one  of  them,  still  con- 
tinue: first,  edification;  second,  the  maintenance  of  lib- 
erty; third,  the  protection  of  the  oppressed;  fourth,  the  de- 
nunciation of  vice;  fifth,  the  purification  of  religion, — 
these,  and  others  on  which  I  cannot  dwell.  But  that  they 
may  be  performed,  and  rightly  performed  for  the  ameliora- 
tion of  the  world,  demands  much  from  us,  but  much  also 
from  you.  What  have  you  a  right  to  demand  from  us  ?  Not 
that  we  should  be  eloquent,  or  greatly  wise,  or  very  pro- 
found; not  that  we  should  now  kindle  your  enthusiasm  and 
now  hold  you  hushed  as  an  infant  on  its  mother's  breast; 
not  that  we  should  make  you  lift  to  us  faces  now  radiant  with 
laughter,  now  white  with  tears.  You  cannot  expect  this; 
for  to  none  has  God  given  to  do  it  always,  and  not  to  many 
to  do  it  ever.  But  there  are  some  things  which  you  may 
demand  of  us.  That  we  should  preach  to  edify,  and  not  to 
please;  to  amend  the  heart,  not  to  tickle  the  ears;  to  be 
understood,  not  to  be  admired.  "Sir,"  said  a  poor  man  to 
an  eminent  preacher  as  he  left  St.  Paul's  cathedral,  "I  came 
here  to  get  good,  but  I  have  got  none :  I  could  not  under- 
stand you."  "Friend,"  replied  the  preacher,  with  tears  in 
his  eyes,  "  if  I  have  not  preached  you  a  good  sermon,  you 
have  preached  me  one."  The  preacher  should  be  clear  and 
plain;  for 


2O2  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"  By  him  the  violated  law  speaks  out 
Its  thunders,  and  by  him  in  strains  as  sweet 
As  angels  use  the  gospel  whispers  peace. 
He  stablishes  the  strong,  upholds  the  weak, 
Reclaims  the  wanderer,  binds  the  broken  heart, 
And,  armed  himself,  he  furnishes  with  arms 
The  sacramental  host  of  God's  elect." 

Alas!  how  much  we  fail!  "When  I  think  of  him  as  a 
preacher,"  says  an  English  author,  "I  seem  to  see  an 
Egyptian  priest,  standing  on  the  threshold  of  the  great 
door  of  Ipsamboul,  blowing  with  all  his  might  to  keep  out 
the  Libyan  desert ;  and  the  four  great  stone  gods,  sitting 
behind  the  altar,  far  back  in  the  gloom,  laughing  at  him." 
Yes!  the  preacher  may  be  in  no  respect  above  you, —  your 
brother  in  sins,  in  infirmities,  in  all  sad  experience,  your 
inferior  in  knowledge,  in  utterance,  even  in  all  spiritual 
grace;  he  may  be  utterly  commonplace,  congenitally  dull; 
yet  * 

"  The  worst  speak  something  good  :  if  all  want  sense 
God  takes  the  text,  and  preaches  patience." 

The  weak  reed,  my  friends,  grows  but  in  the  mud  of  the 
river  bank;  but,  if  the  breath  of  heaven  pass  gently  over 
it,  it  waves  into  music  for  listening  ears  its  thin  stems,  its 
frail  coronal  of  trembling  plumes. 

But  remember,  lastly,  that  the  preacher  will  be  largely 
what  you  make  him.  If  the  soil  be  stony,  or  thorny,  or 
trodden  hard,  what  boots  it  though  the  seed  be  good? 
"The  foolishness  of  preaching"?  Ah,  yes!  but  is  there  no 
such  thing  as  the  foolishness  of  hearing?  Was  the  failure 
of  the  sermon  the  fault  of  Paul  who  preached  or  of  Euty- 
chus  who  slept?  Ah!  if  you  had  been  less  guilty  of  the 
cheap  conceit  of  scorn,  who  knows  whether  you,  too,  might 


THE  PULPIT. 


203 


not  have  found,  as  thousands  have  found,  a  blessing?  Had 
you  been  worthy,  who  knows  whether  some  seraph  might  not 
have  brought  from  God  the  fire  of  inspiration,  and  the  burn- 
ing messages  of  prophecy  been  delivered  by  the  unclean  or 
stammering  lips?  It  was  a  text,  and  nothing  else,  which 
made  a  hermit  of  Anthony,  a  saint  of  Augustine,  a  mission- 
ary of  Francis  Xavier.  If  you  have  not  the  hearing  ear  or 
the  meek  spirit,  a  Paul  or  a  Chrysostom  will  speak  to  you 
in  vain :  if  you  have,  then  many  a  time,  in  these  feeble, 
despised  sermons,  you  might  hear  some  word,  some  thought, 
some  image,  which  might  be  worth  more  to  you  than  all 
that  you  have  learned,  all  that  you  have  got  in  the  world 
beside.  It  might  help  you  to  walk  as  children  of  light;  it 
might  be  to  you  as  a  star  leading  you  through  the  darkness; 
as  a  holy  hand  laid  on  your  head  with  invisible  consecra- 
tion; as  a  voice  behind  you,  saying,  "This  is  the  way :  walk 
ye  in  it,  when  ye  turn  aside  to  the  right  hand  or  to  the 
left."  Yes!  even  amid  all  the  braggart  vaunt  and  puff 
and  push  of  worldly  life,  and  all  its  loud  noises  and  swag- 
gering insolence,  the  voice  of  Christian  preaching,  unac- 
knowledged, disowned,  ridiculed,  may  yet  be  God's  only 
appointed  way  for  you :  perhaps  the  only  way  wherein  you 
shall  be  called  from  darkness  to  light, —  by  which  your 
hearts  shall  be  thrilled  with  the  sense  of  duty,  with  the 
call  of  Christ,  with  the  awful  power  of  the  Unseen! 


BOOKS,    THEIR   POWER   AND   BLESSEDNESS. 

"And  God  said,  Let  there  be  light." —  GEN.  i.  3. 

THERE  is  no  more  fatal  error  than  to  suppose  that  edu- 
cation ends  with  the  days  of  school.  Our  life  itself  is  "a 
beginning  arid  a  setting  forth,  not  a  finishing";  and  it  is 
as  true  of  our  spiritual  experience  as  of  our  temporal 
knowledge  that  we  should  go  on  adding  to  it  even  to  the 
last  day  of  our  lives.  For  by  knowledge  the  mind,  the 
wisdom,  the  soul,  is  fed.  They  become  famine-stricken, 
and  their  faculties  are  atrophied,  if  they  are  not  supplied 
with  their  due  nourishment. 

For  nearly  twenty  years  we  have  had  a  system  of 
national  education.  We  spend  upon  it  millions  of  pounds 
of  the  national  revenue;  and,  manifold  as  are  its  shortcom- 
ings, we  may  be  thankful  for  what  it  accomplishes.  Yet, 
if  it  be  left  unsupplemented,  it  is  disastrously  inadequate. 
Year  by  year,  at  the  perilous  age  of  fourteen,  our  children 
in  tens  of  thousands  leave  the  schools;  and  neither  the 
State  nor  the  efforts  of'  individuals  have  yet  provided  any 
adequate  continuation  of  their  training.  At  an  age  when 
the  German  boy  or  girl  is  still  having  the  faculties  trained 
and  expanded,  our  children  are  turned  loose  into  the 
burning,  fiery  furnace  of  the  streets  of  our  great  cities,  too 
often  to  forget  in  one  year  very  much  of  what  they  had 
learned;  and  between  the  perilous  ages  of  fifteen  and  twenty, 
which  mostly  decide  our  destiny  in  life,  haply,  and  too 
often,  to  turn  their  arithmetic  into  roguery  and  their  lit- 
erature to  lust.  Of  how  many  of  them  can  we  say  that, 


BOOKS,    THEIR  POWER  AND  BLESSEDNESS.  205 

by  the  grace  of  God,  in  that  burning,  fiery  furnace  of  city 
streets,  even  the  smell  of  fire  has  not  passed  upon  their 
garments?  The  day  must  surely  come  when  the  nation 
will  extend  to  its  youth  some  of  the  care  which  it  expends 
upon  its  children. 

Fiat  Lux. —  "Let  there  be  light."  It  was  the  motto 
of  the  first  great  English  printer,  William  Caxton.  Thou- 
sands of  years  elapsed  before  printing  was  invented;  but 
how  opportune  was  the  blessed  moment  of  its  discovery! 
A  few  years  later  Constantinople  fell,  and  the  flight  of 
learned  Greeks  revived  classical  culture  in  Europe,  bring- 
ing about  that  epoch  which  we  call  the  Renascence,  or  new 
birth  of  learning.  Again,  a  few  years  later,  Columbus 
opened  to  the  world  a  new  hemisphere.  A  few  years  later 
still  the  light  of  the  blissful  Reformation  began  to  flood 
the  world.  "Let  there  be  light."  It  shines  on  the  Caxton 
window  of  Westminster  Abbey,  where  the  great  printer  lies 
buried.  It  is  engraved  on  the  base  of  the  statue  of  Guten- 
berg, the  inventor  of  printing.  Light  is  the  only  adequate 
type  of  that  widening  knowledge,  of  that  revealing  insight, 
which  thenceforth  seemed  to  beat  and  broaden  over  the 
world  in  pulse  on  pulse  of  "splendour  as  the  dawn  pulsates 
from  the  eastern  sky." 

"  His  cry  was,  '  Light,  more  light,  while  time  shall  last ! ' 

He  saw  the  glories  growing  on  the  night, 
But  not  the  shadows  which  that  light  shall  cast 
Till  shadows  vanish  in  the  Light  of  Light."  * 

Consider  first  the  stupendous  force  which  books  have, 
added  to  the  victory  of  truth.  Thanks  to  the  printed  page, 
it  is  not  the  blood-stained  conquerors,  not  the  despotic 

*  These  lines  were  written  by  Lord  Tennyson  as  an  inscription  for  the  Caxton  window  in 
St.  Margaret's  Church,  Westminster. 


2o6  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY, 

kings,  not  the  ignorant  shouters  of  anarchy,  who  rule  the 
world :  it  is  the  knowledge  of  the  wise.     Thanks  to  them, 

"  The  pale-featured  sage's  trembling  hand  " 

is 

"  Strong  as  a  host  of  armed  deities, 
Such  as  the  blind  Ionian  fabled  erst." 

More  eternal  than  the  Pyramids,  they  are  the  imperishable 
shrines,  not  of  dead  ashes,  but  of  living  souls.  It  is  by 
their  means  that  truths  become  irresistible.  A  monk  at 
Erfurt  sits  poring  over  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  in  his 
lonely  cell.  While  he  is  musing,  the  fire  burns.  At  last 
he  speaks  with  his  tongue,  and,  lo!  the  nations,  laughing  to 
scorn  the  impotence  of  popes  and  emperors,  shake  a  thou- 
sand of  years  of  cruel  tyranny  and  superstitious  priestcraft 
to  the  dust.  An  astronomer  observes  through  his  rude  tel- 
escope the  planet  Venus  in  crescent,  divines  the  facts  of 
the  planetary  system,  is  denounced  as  a  heretic,  thrown 
into  the  dungeons  of  the  Inquisition,  and  forced  to  recant 
upon  his  knees.  A  few  years  pass,  and  by  the  help  of  the 
printed  page  men  see  that  this  heresy  was  an  eternal  truth, 
and  that  this  discoverer  whom  priests  treated  as  a  criminal 
had  done  more  than  any  who  yet  had  lived  to  reveal  to 
man's  mind  the  plan  of  God.  It  is  thus  that  in  spite  of 
their  prejudices,  in  spite  of  their  aversions,  in  spite  even 
of  their  senses,  men  accept  from  Copernicus,  from  New- 
ton, from  Harvey,  from  Cuvier,  from  Hunter,  from  Jenner, 
from  Franklin,  from  Lyall,  the  new  facts  they  taught,  and 
are  compelled  with  a  groan  of  foolish  agony  to  abandon  the 
refuted  ignorance  of  their  hitherto  most  cherished  convic- 
tions. Truth  once  disseminated  by  books  begins  an  irre- 
sistible career.  When  a  man  has  a  forgotten  duty  to 


BOOKS,  THEIR  POWER  AND  BLESSEDNESS.  2O/ 

enforce,  an  unknown  truth  to  reveal,  and  the  printing-press 
to  help  him,  kings  with  their  armies,  priests  with  their 
anathemas,  shall  as  little  avail  to  stay  his  victory  as  the 
sea-birds  can  stay  the  hurricane  with  their  wings. 

"  Truth,  crushed  to  earth,  shall  rise  again : 

The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers ; 

But  Error,  wounded,  writhes  with  pain, 

And  dies  among  his  worshippers." 

Then  think  what  books  have  done  for  liberty!  In  old 
days  of  the  struggle  for  freedom  many  a  grand  speech  might 
die  away  within  the  walls  where  it  was  uttered:  now,  by 
the  aid  of  the  printing-press,  reverberated  through  all  the 
nations,  it  may  go  thrilling  and  thrilling  through  the 
world,  and  come  rolling  back  to  the  speaker  in  millions  of 
echoes.  The  spoken  word  may  reach  two  or  three  thou- 
sand: the  printed  page  may  be  read  by  three  hundred  mill- 
ions of  men  and  women. 

"  He  uttered  but  a  thought, 
And  it  became  a  proverb  for  the  State ; 
He  wrote  a  sentence  in  a  studious  mood, 
It  was  a  saying  for  a  hemisphere!" 

"Give  them,"  said  Sheridan,  "a  corrupt  House  of  Lords, 
give  them  a  venal  House  of  Commons,  give  them  a  tyranni- 
cal prince,  give  them  a  truckling  court,  and  let  me  but 
have  an  unfettered  press,  and  I  will  defy  them  to  encroach 
but  a  hair's-breadth  on  the  liberty  of  England."  Only 
think  what  cruelties,  of  which  the  thought  curdles  the 
blood,  and  the  memory  inflames  the  cheek,  our  fathers  had 
dumbly  to  endure!  Think  of  the  horrible  crimes  and 
ghastly  secrets  of  monastic  dungeons,  of  baronial  castles. 


208  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

It  is  the  printing-press  which  has  poured  daylight  into 
those  dungeons,  smashed  those  ^implements  of  torture, 
burst  the  portcullis  which  defied  the  battering-ram,  crushed 
down  the  walls  which  withstood  the  cannonade.  It  has 
made  nations  strong  and  free.  It  has  shaken  the  thrones  of 
tyranny,  and  quenched  the  fires  of  persecution,  and  sent 
the  menacing  spectres  of  ignorance  and  hatred  to  gibber 
in  their  congenial  night. 

But  notice  how  the  printing-press  has  given  voice  to  the 
incarnate  conscience  of  mankind. 

Take  but  one  illustration,  and  one  from  our  own  days, — 
the  last  struggle  with  the  curse  of  slavery  on  the  American 
continent.  One  brave  American  reformer,  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  a  youth,  little  more  than  a  boy,  was  inspired  to 
convince  the  millions  of  his  fellow-countrymen  of  the  sin- 
fulness  and  shamefulness  of  treating  men  as  chattels.  He 
stood  utterly  alone.  "Intellect  disowned  him,  respecta- 
bility hated  him."  The  Church  frowned  at  him,  mobs 
assaulted  him.  "Malignity  searched  him  with  candles." 
He  was  starving  on  bread  and  water.  God  honoured  him, 
as  he  honoured  Luther,  by  making  every  bad  man  his  enemy. 
Yet  in  thirty-five  years,  from  a  mean  garret  on  a  third 
story  —  his  bed  on  the  office  floor,  only  a  negro  boy  to  help 
him,  in  daily  dread  of  assassination  —  he  had  won  the  gigan- 
tic victory  of  right  over  might.  And  why?  Solely  because 
the  light  which  fell  through  the  ink-bespattered  window 
upon  the  dingy  wall  fell  upon  a  printing-press.  In  truth, 
the  printing-press  has  added  more  power  to  man's  intellect 
than  the  telescope  to  his  vision  or  the  lever  to  his  arm. 

"  And  Freedom  reared  in  that  august  sunrise 

Her  beautiful  bold  brow ; 
While  rites  and  forms  before  her  burning  eyes 
Melted  like  snow. 


BOOKS,  THEIR  POWER  AND  BLESSEDNESS.  209 

Her  words  did  gather  thunder,  yet  no  sword 

Of  wrath  her  right  arm  whirled, 
But  one  poor  poet's  scroll,  and  with  his  word 

She  shook  the  world." 

But,  having  thus  brought  before  you  the  power  and 
beneficence  of  books  in  the  history  of  nations,  let  me  ask 
you  to  consider  what  they  may  be  to  individual  lives  for 
happiness,  for  companionship,  for  glorious  instruction. 
Remember  only  that,  to  enjoy  their  blessedness,  you  must 
prove  yourselves  worthy  of  their  lessons.  Without  the 
reader,  the  book  is  a  dead  thing.  If  they  are  to  enlighten 
and  elevate  you,  you  must  be  in  earnest,  and  not  of  those 
"flimsy  and  desultory  readers  who  fly  from  foolish  book  to 
foolish  book,  and  get  good  of  none,  and  mischief  of  all." 
To  holy  and  noble  readers  books  are  as  "the  life-blood 
of  master-spirits,  embalmed  for  a  life  beyond  life":  to 
silly  and  indolent  readers  they  are  no  better  than  rags 
and  ink. 

Think,  first,  what  a  difference  in  the  potentiality  of 
human  happiness  is  made  by  books.  Think  what  life 
would  be  without  them,  that  you  may  realize  what  life  may 
be  with  them.  Do  you  desire  wealth?  They  will  bestow 
on  you  wealth  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice,  from  treasures 
more  golden  than  gold,  and  which  no  rust  can  canker.  With 
them  you  may  hold  Egypt  and  Assyria  and  Greece  and 
Italy  in  fee-simple,  and  call  the  world  your  own.  Learn 
but  to  read,  and  the  poorest  of  you  may  be  lords  of  all  that 
mankind  have  thought.  Books  may  be  to  you  an  amulet 
against  vice  and  misery;  for  they  can  save  you  from  long 
days  of  idleness,  and  from  that  vacuity  of  thought  which 
is  fertile  of  degradation.  "I  would  not  exchange  the  love 
of  reading,"  said  Gibbon,  "for  all  the  treasures  of  India." 


2io  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"Books,"  said  Wordsworth,  "are  a  substantial  world,  both 
pure  and  good";  and  it  was  his  great  wish  that  his  own 
works  might,  for  the  young  and  the  virtuous,  co-operate 
with  all  the  benign  forces  of  Nature,  and  add  sunlight  to 
daylight  by  making  the  happy  happier.  "My  library 
shelves,"  said  our  old  Schoolman,  Gilbert  de  la  Porr6e, 
"are  the  avenues  of  time.  Ages  have  wrought,  genera- 
tions grown,  and  all  their  best  blossoms  are  cast  down  here. 
It  is  the  garden  of  immortal  fruits,  without  dog  or  dragon : 
yea,  it  is  a  series  of  king's  gardens,  where  you  may  walk 
at  will,  whose  flowers  are  flowers  of  amaranth,  and  their 
fruits  fruits  of  nepenthe."  With  them  you  need  never  be 
quite  unhappy;  for  in  sadness  they  will  make  you  less  sad, 
in  loneliness  not  utterly  lonely,  and  in  bereavement  not 
totally  bereaved. 

Think,  next,  what  books  may  be  to  you  for  compan- 
ionship. What  excuse  is  there  for  the  poorest  to  seek  for 
base  companions,  and  fellows  in  the  dismal  arts  of  self- 
destruction,  amid  the  low  haunts  where  pleasure  forages  for 
death?  Who  can  say,  "I  have  no  companions"?  Why, 
if  you  will,  the  noblest  of  all  societies  will  welcome  you. 
Kings  will  utter  to  you  their  best  thoughts,  and  saints  sit 
beside  you,  like  brothers!  Is  it  nothing  that  at  the  turn- 
ing of  a  page  you  may  find  the  best  and  greatest  of  men 
eager  to  talk  to  you, —  Dante  to  shew  you  his  awful  visions 
of  judgment  and  of  beatitude,  Milton  to  unroll  his  organ 
music,  Shakspeare  to  admit  you  into  unimaginable  realms 
of  faerie, —  orators  ready  to  pour  forth  for  you  their  most 
splendid  periods,  poets  with  their  garlands  and  singing 
robes  about  them ?  These  noblest  companions,  these  mighty 
spirits  will  have  none  of  the  malice  or  arrogance  or  weak- 
ness of  the  living.  We  may  realize  from  these  that  the 


BOOKS,  THEIR  POWER  AND  BLESSEDNESS.  2II 

communion  of  saints  is  a  communion  not  only  with  the  liv- 
ing, but  with  the  mightier  and  more  unnumbered  dead. 

"  My  days  among  the  dead  are  passed ; 

Around  me  I  behold, 
Where'er  these  casual  eyes  are  cast, 

The  mighty  minds  of  old. 
My  never-failing  friends  are  they, 
With  whom  I  converse  night  and  day." 

Think  once  more  what  books  may  be  to  you  for  in- 
structiveness.  They  will  throw  open  to  you  the  gates  of 
Nature,  and  science  shall  be  to  you  as  a  beneficent  arch- 
angel to  teach  you  about  the  beauty,  the  wonder,  and  the 
power  of  the  works  of  the  Lord ;  about  the  sun  and  moon 
and  stars;  the  refreshing,  glorious  sea,  with  the  ebb  and 
flow  of  its  lustral  tide;  the  trees  of  the  Lord,  which  are  full 
of  sap,  even  the  cedars  of  Libanus  which  he  hath  planted; 
the  thunder  and  lightning,  the  rainbow  and  mirage,  the  rain 
and  snow,  the  dew  and  hoar  frost,  the  pressure,  buoyancy, 
and  elasticity  of  the  bright,  invisible  air.  There  is  all 
History  open  to  you,  with  its  powerful  and  thrilling  interest, 
"a  divine  book  of  revelations,  of  which  the  inspired  texts 
are  great  men."  There  is  all  Biography,  to  reinspire  your 
failing  faith  in  human  nature,  and  to  nourish  you  with  the 
viaticum  of  good  examples,  by  showing  you  how  the  noblest 
men  have  lived.  Would  you  learn  fortitude  amid  hurri- 
canes of  calamity  and  tornadoes  of  slander?  Read  the 
lives  of  Origen  and  of  Milton.  Would  you  learn  the  might 
and  majesty  of  self-sacrifice?  Read  of  Francis  of  Assisi 
and  Francis  Xavier.  Would  you  learn  how  "the  high  de- 
sire that  others  may  be  blessed  savours  of  heaven  "  ?  Read 
of  John  Howard,  and  Elizabeth  Fry,  and  Father  Damien. 
And,  if  you  would  turn  from  these  more  solemn  lessons, 


212  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Poetry  may  uplift  you  on  her  wings,  and  scatter  your  path 
with  gleams  of  Paradise.  And  thus,  by  the  aid  of  books, 
you  need  never  be  alone;  for  you  will  always  be  able  to 
commune  with  your  own  pure  soul,  and  to  find  in  your 
own  memory  and  imagination  a  glowing  picture  gallery  of 
all  that  is  great  in  conduct  and  pure  in  thought. 
Thus,  then, — 

"  From  History's  scroll  the  splendour  streams ; 

From  Science  leaps  the  living  ray ; 
Flashed  from  the  poet's  glowing  dreams, 
The  opal  fires  of  fancy  play." 

But  I  must  here  add  a  warning.  If  these  be  the  high 
functions  of  good  books,  do  not  forget  that  there  are  also 
bad,  silly,  corrupt  books.  Wherever  there  is  any  good 
thing,  the  devil  provides  a  bad  thing  to  counteract  it. 
Books  may  be  not  only  the  employment  of  leisure,  but  the 
corruption  of  leisure;  not  only  the  redeemers  of  time,  but 
the  murderers  of  time.  The  country  is  inundated  with  a 
vast  flood  of  wicked,  malicious,  frivolous,  and  debasing 
literature;  and,  if  you  are  bad  and  foolish,  you  may  read 
yourself  to  death  in  a  multitude  of  evil  works.  To  all  the 
young  I  would  say:  Turn  with  horror,  with  loathing,  with 
contempt,  from  books  which  are  stained  through  and  through 
with  the  passions  of  dishonor;  turn  from  stories  of  pick- 
pockets and  footpads,  daubed  with  tawdry  attractiveness; 
turn  from  the  literature  alike  of  paltry  malice  and  of  revolt- 
ing brutality;  turn  from  silly  snippings  of  coarse  slang  and 
vulgarest  jocosity;  above  all,  turn  from  the  deadly  and 
plague-besprinkled  garbage  of  demoralization  and  obscenity. 
If  there  be  wretches  so  deeply  dyed  in  vileness  as  to  furnish 
you  with  these  incentives  to  ruin  and  self-debasement,  will 


BOOKS,  THEIR  POWER  AND  BLESSEDNESS.  213 

you  be  so  foolish,  so  mad,  as  to  walk  with  open  eyes  into 
their  loathly  and  leprous  snare?  I  know  that  sometimes 
even  Genius  has  polluted  her  vestal  fires,  and  become  a 
''procuress  to  the  Lords  of  Hell";  but  he  who  refuses  to 
read  these  proofs  of  her  sinfulness  and  frailty  helps  to  cut 
off  the  entail  of  that  heavy  curse.  Alas!  alas!  how  many 
a  soul  has  read  itself  to  ruin  in  some  unhallowed  page; 
has  darkened  all  life  by  five  minutes  over  a  corrupt  tale,  or 
by  two  sentences  of  a  blaspheming  tract!  Oh,  if  you  would 
save  yourselves  from  worlds  of  misery,  if  you  would  not 
hopelessly  sully  and  darken  the  crystal  of  your  souls,  fling 
a  guilty  book  into  the  hottest  flame  of  the  winter  fire,  as 
you  would  fling  away  a  rag  full  of  pestilence.  Do  not  in- 
dulge the  vain  dream  that  it  will  not  harm  you.  Can  a 
man  touch  pitch,  and  not  be  defiled?  Can  he  handle  hot 
burning  coals,  and  not  be  burned? 

Wisdom  is  the  principal  thing,  therefore  get  wisdom;  and 
with  all  thy  gettings  get  understanding.  And  how  shall  you 
get  it?  Only  by  prayer  to  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God.  It  cannot 
be  gotten  for  gold;  neither  shall  silver  be  weighed  for  the 
price  thereof.  Where,  then,  shall  wisdom  be  found,  and 
where  is  the  place  of  understanding?  Behold  God  under- 
standeth  the  way  thereof,  and  He  knoweth  the  place  thereof; 
and  unto  man  He  said,  Behold  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  that  is 
wisdom;  and  to  depart  from  evil,  that  is  understanding. 
There  is  one  book  which  is  a  book  of  books,  "of  history  more 
sacred,  of  biography  more  instructive,  of  warning  more  sol- 
emn, of  philosophy  more  eternal,  of  eloquence  more  impas- 
sioned, of  poetry  more  divinely  enchanting,  of  a  light  more 
supernatural  and  clear."  Other  books  may  be  as  gold,  but  in 
this  book,  though  you  be  ignorant  of  all  others,  there  is  a 
wisdom  above  rubies.  It  is  as  the  Urim,  "ardent  with  gems 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

oracular,"  upon  the  ephod  of  the  high  priest;  and  each  pure 
eye  may  see  the  light  of  God  stealing  over  its  graven  stones. 
For  in  that  book,  and  only  by  the  light  which  it  Has  lent, 
you  may  find  Christ ;  and  in  that  book  alone  can  you  hear 
the  voice  which  says,  "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  are  weary 
and  heavy-laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest."  And,  there- 
fore, in  that  river  of  life  you  may  baptize  all  other  knowl- 
edge, and  in  the  atoning  blood  which  it  reveals  you  may 
wash  out  all  other  stains.  The  earliest  of  printed  books 
was  the  Latin  Bible  of  1456.  In  old  days  a  Bible  was  a 
present  for  a  king.  A  man  would  gladly  give  a  load  of  hay 
for  a  few  chapters  of  St.  John.  The  young  St.  Thomas  of 
Aquinas  said  that  he  would  rather  possess  St.  Chrysostom's 
Homilies  on  St.  Matthew  than  the  whole  city  of  Paris. 
Luther  thought  that  it  must  be  the  supreme  of  happiness  to 
possess  all  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul.  Eager  crowds  gath- 
ered round  the  chained  Bibles  in  the  churches  to  hear  but 
a  few  verses  read  aloud.  Now  you  may,  in  one  sense,  pos- 
sess the  whole  Bible  for  a  few  pence.  In  one  sense,  but, 
ah!  how  little  in  another!  It  is  with  the  Bible  as  with  all 
true  books.  He  who  would  learn  its  best  blessings  must 
know  how  to  read  it  aright.  Like  all  other  true  and  holy 
books,  to  read  it,  you  need  no  other  lore,  but  you  do  need 
"pure  eyes  and  Christian  hearts."  And,  when  you  have 
thus  learned  to  read  it,  from  that  one  book  shall  stream  a 
hallowed  light  which  shall  illuminate  all  other  books,  and 
the  true  light  which  shines  in  every  other  book  shall  add 
fresh  lustre  to  that  one.  This  the  grace  of  God  will  grant 
to  you  if  you  seek  it,  and  then,  indeed,  will  you  have 
learned  the  object  and  the  sacredness  of  all  wise  reading; 
then  will  you  be  able  to  echo  from  the  heart  the  burning 
words  of  the  psalmist:  "The  law  of  the  Lord  is  an  unde- 


BOOKS,    THEIR  POWER  AND  BLESSEDNESS. 

filed  law,  converting  the  soul :  the  testimony  of  the  Lord 
is  sure,  and  giveth  wisdom  unto  the  simple.  The  statutes 
of  the  Lord  are  right,  and  rejoice  the  heart :  the  command- 
ment of  the  Lord  is  pure,  and  giveth  light  unto  the  eyes. 
The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  clean,  and  endureth  forever:  the 
judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true  and  righteous  altogether. 
More  to  be  desired  are  they  than  gold,  yea,  than  much 
fine  gold;  sweeter  also  than  honey  and  the  honeycomb. 
Moreover  by  them  is  thy  servant  warned;  and  in  keeping 
of  them  there  is  great  reward." 


THE   IDEAL   CITIZEN. 

"Fellow-citizens  with  the  saints." — EPH.  ii.  19. 

CITIZENS  we  all  are.  When  St.  Paul,  writing  to  the 
Philippians,  who  had  the  Roman  franchise,  said  to  them, 
"Our  citizenship  is  in  heaven,"  he  meant  to  remind  them 
that,  though  they  could  utter  the  boast,  Civis  Romanus 
sum, —  "  I  am  a  citizen  of  Rome,"  —  a  far  nobler  boast  was, 
"I  am  of  the  City  of  God."  Let  them  bear  in  mind  the 
loftier,  the  more  eternal  privileges,  the  diviner,  thesmore 
searching  obligations  of  their  name  as  Christians.  The 
greatest  politician  is  he  to  whom  this  truth  is  ever  present, 
—  he  who  looks  through  the  transient  to  the  permanent, 
he  who  takes  the  Bible  (by  which  I  do  not  mean  this  or 
that  "text,"  or  this  or  that  evanescent  and  partial  ele- 
ment, but  the  Bible  in  its  one  and  essential  revelation, 
the  Bible  as  it  is  summed  up  in  Christ,  the  Perfect 
Man)  as  his  statesman's  manual.  And  they  who  hold 
these  views,  they  whose  statesmanship  is  but  an  element, 
and  a  subordinate  element,  in  their  Christianity, —  such 
men  are  in  heart  united.  They  accept  the  same  prin- 
ciples, though  they  may  differ  in  their  application.  They 
agree  as  to  the  object,  though  they  may  differ  about  the 
methods. 

I  will  try,  then,  by  God's  help,  to  sketch  the  outline  of 
the  Ideal  Citizen.  But  before  doing  so  I  must  make  two 
statements.  The  first  is  that  which  has  to  do  with  all  of 


THE  IDEAL   CITIZEN. 


217 


us;  —  not  only  because  every  one  of  us,  even  the  youngest 
and  poorest,  contributes  a  quota  to  the  life  of  the  nations 
of  the  world,  but  because,  as  I  said,  our  citizenship  is  but  a 
fraction  of  our  heavenly  citizenship.  And  the  other  state- 
ment, which  should  be  needless,  is  that  no  living  man,  no 
earthly  objects,  are  in  my  thoughts.  I  am  not  thinking 
of  the  petty,  passing  interests  of  to-day.  I  flatter  none. 
I  fear  none.  "I  hear  the  roll  of  the  ages"  not  the  babble 
of  surrounding  voices.  I  stand  in  utter  indifference  be- 
fore the  false  and  frivolous  judgments  of  man's  brief  day: 
I  bow  with  awful  reverence  before  the  Great  White  Throne, 
and  Him  who  sits  thereon. 

First,  then,  I  say  that  the  Ideal  Citizen  must  rise 
superior  to  party  spirit.  He  may  of  course  belong  to  a 
party;  but  he  will  not  sink  to  a  mere  partisan.  He  who 
coins  party  watchwords,  who  gets  red-hot  with  party  ani- 
mosities, is  living  for  the  transient,  not  for  the  eternal. 
Eminent  he  may  be:  an  ideal  citizen  he  cannot  be.  One 
of  our  greatest  men  said  that  he  who  would  be  a  great 
poet  must  first  make  his  life  a  poem.  I  say  that  he  who 
would  make  his  life  great  in  any  sense  must  make  it  great 
to  God.  In  some  playful  verses  it  was  said  of  Edmund 
Burke, — 

"  Who,  meant  for  the  universe,  narrowed  his  mind, 
And  to  party  gave  up  what  was  meant  for  mankind." 

Of  that  great  and  good  man,  except  so  far  as  human 
weakness  goes,  the  judgment  was  too  severe;  for  it  was 
truly  said  of  him  that  "he  brought  to  politics  a  horror 
of  crime,  a  deep  humanity,  a  keen  sensibility,  a  singular 
vivacity  and  sincerity  of  conscience."  But  it  is  true  of 
most  of  us.  There  is  hardly, one  of  us  all  who  is  not  con- 


2Ig  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

scions  of  the  tendency  to  become  a  mere  party  man.  The 
old  woman  in  the  back  street,  the  member  of  the  relig- 
ious clique  at  a  tea-table,  the  hot-headed  young  man  in  the 
office,  the  vestry-man  at  the  meeting,  can  show  the  spirit 
of  party  no  less  than  the  legislator.  Whenever  we  fail  to 
do  justice  to  an  opponent  or  to  one  whom  we  dislike; 
whenever  we  snatch  up  a  vehement  opinion  with  wrath  and 
clamour;  whenever  we  adopt  a  tone  of  denunciative  igno- 
rance about  things  which  we  do  not  understand;  whenever 
we  join  in  the  blind  clamour  against  unpopular  names; 
whenever  we  repeat  the  shameful  innuendo  or  the  biting 
jest,  we  may  stand  very  high  in  the  world,  but  we  are  not 
ideal  citizens  or  ideal  in  any  way. 

For  the  Ideal  Citizen  must  walk  in  the  light,  must  love 
the  truth.  And  these  methods  do  not  brighten  the  truth : 
they  obscure  it.  They  do  not  quicken  progress:  they  retard 
it.  They  do  not  ennoble  nations:  they  degrade  and  weaken 
them.  They  do  not  purify  life,  but  embitter  and  poison 
it.  If  we  would  escape  the  average,  we  cannot  advance  one 
step  without  those  elementary  Christian  graces  —  modesty, 
sympathy,  fairness  of  judgment,  humility,  candour  —  which 
amid  the  clash  of  controversy  are  too  often  trampled  under 
foot.  Candour  —  whiteness,  brightness,  brightness  of  the 
clear  sky,  brightness  of  the  crystal  spring,  brightness  of 
the  transparent  soul, —  ah!  it  is  a  gem  rare  and  of  the 
purest  lustre,  not  to  be  found  in  the  sulphurous  mines  of 
passion,  undiscoverable  by  the  fuming  torches  of  strife  and 
faction.  But  the  ideal  politician  will  wear  it  on  his  breast, 
and  no  mean  heart  can  beat  beneath  it.  The  average  man, 
the  man  who  is  swayed  by  "the  eternal  spirit  of  the  popu- 
lace," sees  his  own  opinions  all  white,  and  the  other  all 
black;  his  own  side  all  grandeur,  the  other  all  mischief; 


THE  IDEAL   CITIZEN. 


219 


his  own  side  all  truth,  the  other  all  lies.  No  great  man, 
no  ideal  man,  no  true  Christian,  ever  can  take  these  views 
of  things.  He  can  credit  his  opponents  with  intellects  as 
keen,  with  motives  as  honourable,  with  hearts  as  upright  as 
his  own.  Not  long  ago  an  English  statesman  died  about 
whose  name  the  waves  of  party  had  been  dashing  all  his 
life.  There  were  some  who  did  not  agree  with  him,  who 
thought  that  his  policy  was,  as  a  whole,  mistaken  in  its 
tendency,  and  who  yet,  when  the  grave  closed  over  him  —  in 
that  generosity  which  mingles  with  the  pathos  of  death  — 
tried  to  appreciate  only  the  greater  qualities  of  his  charac- 
ter, the  highest  aims  of  his  life.  The  brink  of  the  open 
grave  is  not  the  place  for  severity  or  for  criticism.  Even 
when  a  great  man  dies  who  has  been  a  bad  man,  we  feel 
that  the  day  of  his  death  is  not  the  time  to  judge  him. 

"  The  crowded  hall,  the  murmur,  and  the  gaze, 
The  look  of  envy,  and  the  voice  of  praise, 
And  friendship's  smile,  and  passion's  treasured  vow, — 
All  these  are  nothing. —  life  is  nothing  now! 
And  'what  is  writ  is  writ':  the  sin,  the  shame, 
All  eyes  may  read  them,  and  all  lips  may  blame ; 
Let  feeble  hands,  iniquitously  just, 
Rake  up  the  relics  of  the  sinful  dust, 
Let  ignorance  mock  the  pang  it  could  not  feel, 
And  malice  brand  what  mercy  would  conceal, 
It  matters  not !  " 

This  we  say  when  even  a  bad  man  dies.  But  when  a  man 
dies  who,  even  by  the  confession  of  his  enemies,  has  hon- 
ourably served  his  country,  was  it  not  a  shocking  sign  of 
party  feelings  that  when  one  who  had  received  from  him 
nothing  but  kindness  spoke  of  him  in  Westminster  Abbey 
in  terms  perhaps  of  generous,  but  certainly  of  honest 
eulogy,  he  should,  because  of  those  words,  have  been  pelted 


22O  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

with  insults?  The  statesman  to  whom  I  refer  is  Lord 
Beaconsfield.  On  one  occasion  a  divine  who  was  not  of 
his  party  told  a  mere  chance  anecdote  to  his  credit  at  a 
meeting.  Next  morning  he  received  a  parcel  of  all  his  own 
books  returned  to  him,  with  the  remark  that  a  man  who 
praised  that  statesman  could  not  be  trusted  as  a  religious 
teacher!  Was  not  this  a  degraded  proof  that  candour  has 
no  place  in  many  breasts? 

My  friends,  whether  you  are  public  men  or  private  men, 
whether  you  live  in  stately  houses  or  in  back  streets,  you 
cannot  be  great,  or  good,  or  in  any  high  sense  Christians, 
until  you  learn  the  holy  lessons  of  that  charity  which,  even 
amid  the  hottest  strife  of  party  factions,  suffereth  long,  and 
is  kind,  thinketh  no  evil,  rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity,  but  re- 
joiceth  in  the  truth,  beareth  all  things,  believeth  all  things, 
hopeth  all  things,  endureth  all  things. 

And  next  to  candour  I  would  place  among  the  requi- 
sites of  the  ideal  statesman,  a  stainless  integrity, —  integ- 
rity like  his  of  whom  his  enemy  said,  "If  you  place  the  sun 
at  his  right  hand  and  the  moon  at  his  left,  you  could  not 
make  him  swerve  from  the  path  of  duty."  Few  nations 
have,  I  suppose,  more  reason  to  be  proud  of  her  statesmen 
on  this  score  than  England  has.  Yet  it  has  not  been 
always  so.  How  long  ago  is  it  since  even  great  ecclesi- 
astics shamelessly  and  with  both  hands  enriched  themselves 
and  their  families  out  of  the  Church's  spoils,  and  left  all  over 
their  dioceses  the  proofs  of  their  nepotism  and  their  greed? 
How  long  ago  is  it  since  a  Prime  Minister,  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  declared,  as  the  cynical  result  of  years  of  political 
experience,  that  "every  man  had  his  price"?  How  long 
ago  is  it  since  another  Prime  Minister,  William  Pitt, 
almost  burst  into  tears  when,  for  dubious  dealings,  the  name 


THE  IDEAL   CITIZEN.  221 

of  his  dearest  friend  was  erased  from  the  list  of  the  Privy 
Council?  How  long  ago  is  it  since  another  —  so  great,  so 
eloquent  —  Charles  James  Fox,  lured  by  ambition  to  com- 
bine with  men  whom  he  had  once  bitterly  denounced,  com- 
mitted the  great  error  of  his  life,  and  provoked  the  stern 
remark,  "England  does  not  love  coalitions"?  I  will  not 
allude  to  any  individual  cases  less  than  a  hundred  years 
ago;  but  seeing  that,  two  years  ago,  England  was  sickened 
week  after  week  by  the  revelations  of  how  men,  intrusted 
with  the  sacred  duty  of  the  franchise,  unblushingly  sold 
their  votes  for  all  sorts  of  personal  motives,  from  sums  of 
money  down  to  pots  of  beer,  we  have  hardly,  I  think,  yet 
reached  that  millennium  when  it  is  needless  to  speak  of 
stainless  integrity  as  an  essential  of  ideal  citizenship.  But 
here,  again,  my  statements  are  applicable  to  all.  If  you 
would  be  a  true  woman,  or  boy,  or  man,  no  golden  apple, 
however  glittering,  must  ever  stay  or  seduce  you  to  turn 
from  the  swift,  straight  race  of  life,  or  from  the  narrow 
wicket-gate  of  duty.  Others  succeed;  you  fail.  Be  it 
so.  If  you  have  wished  only  to  speak  the  truth,  and  to 
do  the  right,  despise  those  laurels ;  scorn  altogether  those 
triumphs. 

Nothing,  my  friends,  be  you  statesmen  or  be  you  shop- 
boys,  will  ever  compensate  you  for  that  thrilling  voice,  that 
innermost  voice,  heard  by  you  always,  even  in  the  silence, 
even  at  the  midnight,  which  alone  can  say  to  you,  "Well 
done!"  The  moment  that,  be  it  in  great  things  or  be  it 
in  little  things,  you  sell  but  one  scruple  of  your  integrity, 
the  crown  will  have  fallen  from  your  head;  for  you  have 
sinned.  And  the  greater  you  are,  the  more  will  this  be 
true.  It  is  thus  that  a  poet  wrote  of  an  American  states- 
man now  dead :  — 


222  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"  So  fallen,  so  lost !     The  light  withdrawn 

Which  once  he  wore  ! 
The  glory  from  the  gray  hairs  gone 
For  evermore ! 

"  All  else  is  gone :  from  those  great  eyes 

The  soul  has  fled ; 

When  faith  is  lost,  when  honour  dies, 
The  man  is  dead!" 

Candour,  then,  and  stainless  integrity,  and,  thirdly, 
among  the  essentials  of  ideal  statesmanship  (mark,  for 
every  one  of  us!)  I  place  inflexible  courage.  Here,  again, 
we  have  something  to  learn  from  the  old  Greek  and  Roman 
statesmen, —  Athens  not  quailing  before  Alexander,  when  he 
came  to  her  red  from  the  ashes  of  Thebes ;  Rome  with  her 
legends  of  Scaevola  and  Manlius,  of  Fabricius  and  Regu- 
lus.  The  brute  physical  courage,  the  courage  that  does  not 
fear  death, —  courage  as  of  the  tiger,  which  will  "leap  with 
bare  breast  and  unarmed  claws  upon  the  hunter's  steel  "; 
courage  of  the  poor  soldier,  who,  blamed  for  something  by 
the  general  whom  he  adores,  charging,  one  against  a  thou- 
sand, 

"  Hurls  his  soiled  life  against  the  pikes,  and  dies  " ; 

courage  of  Leonidas  at  Thermopylae,  of  Arnold  von  Winkel- 
ried  at  Sempach, —  even  that  is  something!  It  is  the 
attribute  of  a  man!  Higher  still  is  moral  courage, — 
courage  of  Paul  on  the  Areopagus;  of  Athanasius  against 
the  world;  of  John  Huss  at  Constance;  of  Martin  Luther 
at  Worms;  of  Wesley  standing  up  to  preach  before  yelling 
mobs.  And,  when  the  two  are  combined  in  utterance  of 
the  truth  which  defies  death,  there  you  have  the  martyr  and 
the  saint!  In  public  life  you  may  have  to  face —  in  private 
life,  even,  you  may  have  to  face  —  this  deadly,  this  raging, 


THE  IDEAL   CITIZEN. 


223 


this  unscrupulous  opposition.  You  will  have  to  be  content, 
if  you  be  a  true  man,  that  men  should  hate  you,  and  call 
you  Beelzebub.  Take  the  case  of  the  American  abolition- 
ists. At  one  of  those  meetings  to  support  slavery,  when  it 
seemed  as  if  the  very  passions  of  demons  were  let  loose, 
one  of  the  speakers  said:  "Where  are  tKe  abolitionists 
now?  I  should  like  to  see  an  abolitionist  now."  And  at 
once,  amid  tumult  and  howls  and  personal  violence,  a  burly 
figure  thrust  itself  forward,  and  a  lion-voice  exclaimed,  "I 
am  Theodore  Parker,  and  /  am  an  abolitionist!"  It  is 
something  to  face  hostile  mobs;  something  to  look  without 
quailing,  to  look  like  a  king  among  meaner  men,  into  a 
sea  of  angry  faces.  But  to  brave  the  collective  mediocrity; 
to  disregard  the  elaborate  sneers;  to  tell  a  church  or  a 
nation  that  it  is  swayed  by  passion  and  misled  by  igno- 
rance; to  tell  them,  for  all  their  anathemas,  that  they  must 
accept  the  truth  which  they  have  hated,  and  hate  the  lie 
which  they  have  believed;  plainly  to  speak  the  truth,  boldly 
to  rebuke  vice,  and  to  do  this  at  the  cost  of  wealth  or  place 
or  power  or  the  good  opinion  of  those  who  have  hitherto 
favoured  us,  or  of  everything  which  we  have  loved, — yes! 
this,  if  done  for  conscience'  sake,  shall  not  lose  its  reward. 
The  man  who  will  lead,  and  not  follow,  public  opinion;  the 
man  who,  leading  it,  will  make  it  come  round  to  him  or 
die  in  the  effort  to  do  so, — yes,  this  is  the  patriot,  this  the 
ideal  politician, — 

"This  is  the  Happy  Warrior,  this  is  he 
Whom  every  man  at  arms  would  wish  to  be ! " 

But  he  must  suffer  for  it.  Such  "extreme  lovers  of  their 
country  and  of  mankind  are  never  fortunate,  neither  can 
they  be;  for,  when  a  man  places  his  thoughts  without  him- 


224  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

self,  he  goeth  not  his  own  way."  "Your  public  career 
will  be  checkered,"  said  Lord  Brougham  to  the  late  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  when  he  was  differing  from  those  with  whom 
he  had  been  so  long  connected;  "but  you  can  always  turn 
from  the  storm  without  to  the  sunshine  of  an  approving 
conscience  within." 

And  besides  candour,  integrity,  courage,  the  true  citi- 
zen must  be  content  to  accept  a  complete  self-sacrifice. 
The  good  man  who  thinks  himself  worthy  of  great  things, 
being  worthy,  must  also  magnanimously  feel  that  if  the 
whole  world  be  against  him,  the  greatest  thing  he  can  do 
is  to  be  true  to  himself.  He  must  be  content  not  only 
to  fail  now  (that  is  a  small  matter),  but  to  fail  in  this 
world  quite  finally;  to  descend  to  the  grave  unthanked  and 
unhonoured,  perhaps  even  as  Christ  did  amid  the  con- 
tempt and  hatred  of  mankind.  Unshaken,  unseduced,  un- 
terrified,  he  must  rise  superior  to  the  vulgar  worship  of 
what  men  call  success;  he  must  be  quite  willing  to  de- 
crease and  to  descend;  he  must  count,  with  God's  greatest, 
that  apparent  success  is  often  abject  failure,  and  apparent 
failure  royal  success.  Think  over  the  lives,  think  over  the 
ends,  of  John  the  Baptist,  of  Paul  the  Apostle,  of  Dante, 
of  Columbus,  of  Milton,  of  almost  all  the  world's  best  and 
greatest;  ah!  if  you  be  indeed  a  Christian,  think  of  Him 
whose  example  we  profess  to  follow,  think  of  all  that  is 
meant  by  the  three  short  words,  the  "Cross  of  Christ." 
Those  who  have  been  nearest  Him  have  been  ready  to 
sacrifice  their  very  lives  for  His  dear  sake. 

But,  my  friends,  no  man  can  achieve  these  heights 
without  a  fourth  requisite  for  ideal  citizenship,  which  is 
faith  in  human  nature.  It  is  often  a  struggle  not  to  lose 
this.  There  are  times  when  the  vision  of  human  nature 


THE  IDEAL    CITIZEN. 


225 


appears  to  us  so  ugly,  and  life  itself  so  hollow,  that,  giving 
up  all  hope  for  mankind  and  even  for  ourselves,  we  say 
with  Elijah,  "And  now,  O  Lord,  take  away  my  life;  for 
I  am  not  better  than  my  fathers."  But  the  ideal  states- 
man must  never  sink  into  this  despair.  And,  to  save  him 
from  it,  we  must  look  at  all  men  in  Christ,  and  on  every 
man,  however  base  and  wretched,  as  one  for  whom  Christ 
died.  He  who  clings  to  these  principles  will  try  to  live  for 
mankind,  not  for  a  class;  still  less  for  individual  men; 
least  of  all  for  himself  only.  Never  will  he  forget  that  the 
good  of  the  swarm  must  be  the  good  also  of  the  bee;  never 
will  he  pity  the  ruffled  plumage,  while  he  forgets  the  dying 
bird.  He  must  feel  "the  deep  and  terrible  reality  which 
lies  in  the  two  words,  'national  life.''  He  must  have 
faith  in  eternal  principles.  He  must  be  fearless  of  menac- 
ing phantoms.  He  must  not  be  daunted  by  stupidity; 
must  not  be  shaken  by  ingratitude.  He  must  believe  that 
the  victory  of  Christianity,  which  means  the  ultimate  tri- 
umph of  all  that  is  right  and  good,  has  all  the  certainty  of 
an  inevitable  law. 

And,  as  a  last  requisite,  all  this  means  that  the  Ideal 
Citizen  must  have  an  immense  faith  in  God.  He  must 
sweep  away  the  notion  that  custom  or  expediency  can 
modify  the  sanctions  of  the  eternal  law.  Listen  to  a  few 
words  which  Wesley  wrote  about  the  slave-trade,  and  tell 
me  whether  they  are  not  applicable  to  other  questions 
now:  "Can  human  law  turn  darkness  into  light,  or  evil 
into  good?  Notwithstanding  ten  thousand  laws,  there 
must  still  remain  an  essential  difference  between  justice 
and  injustice,  cruelty  and  wrong.  You  say  it  is  necessity. 
I  deny  that  villany  is  ever  necessary.  It  is  necessary  to 
my  gaining  .£100,000.  I  deny  that  your  gaining  one  thou- 


226  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

sand  is  necessary  to  your  present  or  eternal  happiness.  It 
is  necessary  for  the  wealth  and  glory  of  England.  Wealth 
is  not  necessary  to  the  glory  of  any  nation.  Wisdom, 
virtue,  justice,  mercy,  generosity,  public  spirit,  love  of  our 
country, —  these  are  necessary  to  the  glory  of  a  nation;  but 
abundance  of  wealth  is  not."  So  wrote  John  Wesley  about 
the  slave-trade.  Have  not  all  Christian  statesmen  said  the 
same?  "You  glory,"  said  Oliver  Cromwell,  "in  that 
ditch  which  guards  your  shores.  I  tell  you,  your  ditch  will 
be  no  defence  to  you  unless  you  reform  yourselves."  "I 
plead,"  said  a  living  statesman,  "only  for  what  I  believe 
to  be  just.  During  twenty-five  years  I  have  endured  meas- 
ureless insult,  and  passed  through  hurricanes  of  abuse. 
My  clients  have  generally  been  the  poor  and  lowly.  They 
cannot  give  me  place,  and  dignities,  and  wealth,  but  hon- 
ourable service  in  their  cause  yields  me  that  which  is  of  far 
higher  and  more  lasting  value, —  the  consciousness  that  I 
have  laboured  to  expound  and  uphold  laws  which,  though 
they  were  not  given  among  the  thunders  of  Sinai,  are  not 
less  the  commandments  of  God,  and  not  less  intended  to 
promote  and  secure  the  happiness  of  men." 

Well,  then,  in  conclusion,  perhaps  you  will  say  to  me, 
But  in  this  sketch,  imperfect  as  it  is,  you  have  sketched  not 
the  statesman,  not  the  citizen,  but  the  Christian,  the  phi- 
lanthropist, the  religious  man.  Be  it  so.  In  some  form 
or  other  the  ideal  statesman  must  be  the  philanthropist, 
the  Christian,  the  religious  man.  There  is  no  other  ideal 
attainable.  The  only  true  diplomacy  is  perfect  truthful- 
ness. The  only  international  law  is  perfect  honesty.  The 
only  noble  statesmanship  is  faith  in  God,  and  love  to  men. 
By  the  religious  man  I  do  not  mean  the  man  who  has  sacred 
words  most  often  on  his  lips.  By  the  religious  man  I  mean 


THE  IDEAL    CITIZEN. 


227 


the  good  man;  by  religion  I  mean  holiness;  by  the  gospel 
I  mean  the  good  news  of  a  kingdom  of  righteousness  upon 
earth.  All  high  political  questions,  questions  of  pauper- 
ism, of  education,  of  public  amusements,  of  commercial 
honesty,  of  preventing  disease,  of  diminishing  crime,  be- 
long to  it.  Ay,  and  little  daily  duties  belong  to  it.  "A 
chastened  temper,  a  tongue  that  speaks  no  evil,  cheerful- 
ness amid  petty  worries,  purity  of  heart  ever  eloquent  in 
its  silence,  thoughtfulness  for  others  rather  than  for  our- 
selves,"-— "these,"  it  has  been  said,  "are  the  precious  stones 
that  build  up  the  walls  of  the  Holy  City."  If  we  would 
be  ideal  statesmen,  or  ideal  anything,  we  must  help  to 
build  it.  Let  us  build  it  in  our  own  hearts  first.  Unless 
we  build  it  there, —  unless  there  we  see  some  glimpses  of 
the  city  which  hath  no  need  of  the  sun,  neither  of  the  moon, 
to  lighten  it,  for  the  glory  of  God  doth  lighten  it,  and  the 
Lamb  is  the  light  thereof, —  then  all  other  efforts  will  be 
in  vain.  But  if  we  build  it  in  our  own  hearts,  then, 
sooner  or  later,  and  sooner  rather  than  later,  in  the  world 
around  us,  also,  we  shall  lay  its  stones  with  fair  colours, 
and  its  foundations  with  sapphires;  and  in  a  society  full 
of  candour,  full  of  integrity,  full  of  courage,  happy  in 
self-sacrifice,  animated  with  pure  faith  in  man,  and  with 
immeasurable  love  to  God,  we  shall  soon  be  able  to 

exclaim, — 

"  Lo !  the  clouds  begin  to  shine 
About  the  coming  of  the  Lord !" 


SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 

"And  the  Lord  commanded  us  ...  to  fear  the  Lord  our  God,  for  our  good 
always."—  DEUT.  vi.  24. 

THE  fact  that  in  Westminster  Abbey  a  window  was  un- 
veiled, a  gift  of  Americans  to  the  church, —  this  beautiful 
window,  which  they  have  given,  being  almost  the  sole  exist- 
ing memorial  of  a  very  great  character  and  a  transcendently 
great  event, —  compels  the  choice  of  my  topic.  I  follow 
such  guidance  as  confidently  as  if  it  were  a  direction 
spelled  out  by  the  gleaming  light  on  Israel's  Urim.  Let 
us  get  rid  of  the  superstition  that  such  topics,  when  thus 
pointed  out  to  us,  are  not  religious,  not  spiritual,  not  the 
gospel.  Let  us  shake  off  the  narrow  prejudice  that,  because 
the  Bible  is  God's  book,  it  is  His  only  book.  Our  lives 
would  be  better,  our  thoughts  nobler,  our  hearts  larger,  our 
faith  more  real,  our  words  more  charitable,  if  we  would, 
once  for  all,  learn  the  lesson  of  the  Law  and  the  Prophets, 
which  is  not  to  glide  along  the  razor's  edge  of  scholastic 
dogmas,  nor  to  wear  formulas  threadbare  by  conventional 
iteration,  but  to  love  God,  and  to  do  good  to  our  neighbour. 
Which  is  best, —  to  diffuse  the  grandeur  and  sacredness  of 
faith  over  the  whole  of  daily  life,  or  to  regard  all  but  a 
fraction  of  life  as  irredeemably  secular?  Which  is  best,— 
to  specialize  Sundays  with  servile  rigorism,  or  to  diffuse  the 
spirit  of  Sunday  over  days  which  we  too  often  devote  to 
meanness  and  Mammon?  Which  is  best, —  to  surround 
places,  gestures,  garments,  with  a  mechanical  sanctity,  or 
by  holy  lives  to  make  the  floor  of  a  cottage  as  sacred  as  the 


SIR    WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


229 


rocks  of  Sinai,  and  the  commonest  events  hallowed  as  the 
rounds  of  the  ladder  on  which  angels  tread?  Alas  for  the 
exclusiveness,  which,  resting  on  the  impossible  demand  for 
verbal  orthodoxy,  has  too  often  made  of  religious  teachers 
a  caste,  and  of  religious  society  a  clique,  and  of  religious 
talk  a  cant,  and  of  religious  mannerism  a  stumbling-block! 
Oh  for  one  hour  of  the  breeze  —  yea,  even  of  the  storm  — 
of  Galilee  to  sweep  away  these  mists!  Religion  was  meant 
surely  to  be  a  diffusive  dawn,  not  a  narrow  beam  in  the 
midnight;  it  was  meant  to  be  'a  universal  atmosphere  for 
the  many,  not  an  intoxicating  perfume  for  the  few.  And 
the  Book  of  God, —  surely,  it  is  not  only  such  a  book  as  our 
Caxton  could  print  and  bind,  but  a  book  universal  as  our 
race,  individual  as  ourselves.  The  soldier  may  reveal  God 
as  well  as  the  priest;  the  life  of  the  busy  statesman  may 
teach  us  His  lessons  no  less  than  that  of  the  cloistered 
saint.  Let  those  whose  spiritual  life  has  dried  up  into 
the  acrid  rivulet  of  a  party  say,  if  they  will,  that  topics 
suggested  by  daily  events  are  not  "the  gospel":  I  say 
that  the  gospel  may  be  found  by  pure  hearts  and  enlight- 
ened eyes  otherwhere  than  in  the  straight-dug  ditches  of 
formalists;  and  that,  if 

"  Every  bird  that  sings, 
And  every  flower  that  stars  the  elastic  sod, 
And  every  breath  the  radiant  summer  brings, 
To  the  pure  spirit  is  a  word  of  God," 

so,  too,  every  human  life  is  the  life  of  a  child  of  God,  more 
or  less  erring,  but  never  unloved  by  its  heavenly  Father; 
and  that  they  who  are  noble  may  find  elements  of  noble- 
ness, they  who  know  the  gospel  may  find  the  gospel,  as 
clearly  written  by  the  finger  of  God  in  the  pages  of  Experi- 
ence as  in  that  which  we  call  specially  His  Book.  Besides 


230  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  other  memories  which  haunt  it,  Westminster  Abbey 
may  claim  its  heritage  in  three  great  men  and  three  great 
events.  The  great  men,  whose  names  are  on  its  registers, 
are  William  Caxton,  Walter  Raleigh,  John  Milton.  The 
great  events  are  the  History  of  Printing,  the  Discovery  of 
America,  the  English  Revolution.  Caxton  lies  buried 
there.  The  headless  body  of  Sir  Walter  was  carried  there 
from  the  scaffold  in  Palace  Yard.  Milton,  with  Hampden, 
Pym,  and  Cromwell,  must  often  have  knelt  in  worship 
there.  There  his  banns  were  called.  There  lies  his  best 
loved  wife,  the  "late-espoused  saint";  there  the  child  into 
whose  little  grave  fell  Milton's  tears.  Caxton,  and  the 
Introduction  of  Printing  into  England,  are  now  commemo- 
rated by  the  gift  of  the  Printers  of  London;  Raleigh,  and 
the  Colonization  cf  the  New  World,  by  the  window  un- 
veiled. I  had  but  to  mention  to  one  or  two  American  gen- 
tlemen that  the  man  who  named  and  colonized  Virginia 
lies  almost  unrecorded  there,  and  they,  with  the  ready 
munificence  which  marks  their  nation,  and  which  is  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  lessons  which  we  may  learn  from  our  "  kin 
beyond  the  sea,"  at  once,  without  any  toil  and  anxiety  of 
mine,  gave  the  £600  which  that  window  required.  I  ask 
Americans  to  accept  our  thanks  for  their  generous  friendli- 
ness; and  I  venture  to  believe  that,  long  after  we  are  in 
our  graves,  generations  yet  to  come  will  look  with  interest 
on  our  great  west  window,  and  will  read  with  interest  the 
lines  written  on  it  by  one  who  was  at  once  the  American 
Minister  and  one  of  the  first  of  living  American  poets:  — 

"  The  New  World's  sons,  from  England's  breasts  we  drew 

Such  milk  as  bids  remember  whence  we  came ; 
Proud  of  her  Past,  wherefrom  our  Present  grew, 
This  window  we  inscribe  with  Raleigh's  name."  * 

•Written  by  Mr.  James  Russell  Lowell,  who  was  present  on  the  occasion. 


SIR    WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


231 


Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  in  whose  honour  the  window  was 
given,  was  not  one  of  the  world's  simple,  blameless  charac- 
ters, like  William  Caxton,  of  whom  we  spoke  so  recently. 
Men  of  splendid  physique  and  genius,  children  of  a  richly- 
endowed  and  passionate  age,  have  temptations  more  intense 
and  terrible  than  we  who  live  our  small,  humdrum  lives  in 
the  petty  routine  of  commonplace.  Our  faults  may  be  as  bad 
as  theirs,  though  they  are  meaner  and  smaller  faults.  Their 
sins  show  large  in  the  largeness  of  their  lives,  and  in  the 
fierce  light  which  beats  upon  them.  'At  any  rate,  who  are 
we  little  men  that  we  should  sit  in  judgment  upon  them? 
A  life  of  heroic  aims,  exposed  to  gigantic  temptations,  may 
be  stained  by  great  faults  amid  great  achievements;  but  is 
such  a  life  to  be  coldly  slandered  by  men  of  the  small 
vices,  low  aims,  petty  endeavours,  we  see  all  around  us?  If 
Walter  Raleigh  in  some  things  sinned  greatly,  God  loved 
him  so  well  that  he  also  suffered  greatly,  and  out  of  much 
tribulation  washed  his  robes  white  in  the  blood  of  the 
Lamb.  "Reader,"  says  Dean  Milman,  "if  thou  recall  his 
sins,  remember  also  that  he  had  great  virtues,  and  that 
thou  thyself  art  mortal."  Yes!  and  remember  also  that  he 
must  be  ranked  forever  among  the  benefactors  of  his  race, 
and  that  there  are  very  few  of  us  who  have  not  done  worse 
deeds  than  he,  and  have  never  done  as  good  ones.  It  is 
strange  to  me  that  one  paltry  tablet  should  hitherto  have 
been  almost  the  only  memorial  of  such  a  man.  Great  na- 
tions should  have  more  pride  in  their  few  great  sons.  I 
think  that  Americans  will  rejoice  with  us  that,  after  more 
than  two  hundred  and  seventy  years,*  he  should  have  a  wor- 
thier memorial  of  his  immortal  deeds  in  the  church  under 
whose  altar  lies  his  headless  corpse. 

Many  of  you  may  have  seen  the  striking  painting  of  the 

*  Raleigh  was  beheaded  in  1618. 


232  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"Boyhood  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,"  by  our  greatest  painter.* 
One  of  the  noble  boys  who  sits  listening  to  the  old  sea- 
worthy is  Raleigh,  the  other  may  be  taken  for  his  half- 
brother,  also  depicted  on  the  window,  Sir  Humphrey 
Gilbert.  He,  too,  nobly  did  his  part  as  soldier  and  sailor, 
when  Elizabeth  was  queen.  Raleigh  aided  him  in  the 
endeavour  to  discover  and  take  possession  of  unknown  lands; 
and  the  queen  sent  him  as  a  jewel  a  golden  anchor,  with  a 
pearl  at  the  beak.  In  the  little  "Squirrel,"  a  mere  trivial 
yacht  of  only  ten  tons'  burthen,  he  explored  the  dangerous 
coasts  of  Cape  Breton,  refusing  to  forsake  the  little  com- 
pany with  whom  he  had  passed  through  so  many  perils. 
Sitting  abaft,  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  amid  the  fury  of  the 
storm  he  called  out  repeatedly  to  the  sailors  in  the  "Golden 
Hind,"  "We  are  as  near  heaven  by  sea  as  by  land,"  "reit- 
erating the  same  speech,"  says  the  captain  of  the  "Hind," 
"well  beseeming  a  soldier  resolute  in  Jesus  Christ,  and 
I  can  testify  he  was.  The  same  Monday  night,  about 
twelve  of  the  clock,  suddenly  the  lights  of  the  'Squirrel' 
disappeared,  and  withal  our  watch  cried  out  our  general 
was  cast  away,  which  was  too  true;  for  in  that  moment 
the  frigate  was  devoured  and  swallowed  up  in  the  sea." 
Dare  you  speak  up  for  religion,  dare  you  brave  death, 
dare  you  take  Christ  for  your  Captain,  dare  you  deny  your- 
selves, dare  you  face  storms,  peril,  wounds,  bad  fare,  thun- 
der and  frost,  and  tropic  heat  and  fever  and  scurvy  for  a 
great  cause,  as  they  did?  "Seeing,"  said  Gilbert,  "that 
death  is  inevitable,  and  the  fame  of  virtue  immortal,  where- 
fore in  this  behalf  mutare  vel  timere  sperno."  How  many 
of  you  can  speak  in  those  high  tones?  They  were  cut  off 
in  the  flower  of  their  days:  few  of  them  laid  their  bones  in 
the  sepulchre  of  their  fathers.  Life  with  them  was  no 

•By  Sir  J.  E.M'.'.lais,  R.A. 


SfJ?    WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


233 


summer  holiday,  but  a  holy  sacrifice  offered  up  to  duty, 
and  what  their  Maker  sent  was  welcomed.  "He  was  one," 
says  the  historian,  "'of  a  race  that  has  ceased  to  be.  Brave 
we  may  still  be,  and  strong,  perhaps,  as  then,  but  the 
high  moral  grace  which  made  bravery  and  strength  so 
beautiful  is  departed  from  us."  *  Young  men,  it  rests  with 
you  —  on  the  lives  you  lead,  on  the  faith  which  you  em- 
brace—  whether  or  not  it  shall  have  departed  from  us  for 
ever. 

Among  souls  so  pure  and  noble  the  boy  Raleigh  passed 
his  earlier  years.  After  brilliant  promise  at  school  and 
college,  by  the  age  of  seventeen  he  was  fighting  for  Prot- 
estants in  France,  and  beginning  his  many-sided  life  as 
soldier,  sailor,  courtier,  poet,  discoverer,  and  author.  If 
you  would  understand  his  life,  and  the  glorious  years  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  you  must  remember  three  things:  that  it 
was  the  era  of  the  Renascence;  the  era  of  the  Reformation; 
and  the  era  of  the  colonization  of  America. 

It  was  the  era  of  the  Renascence.  That  new  boyhood 
of  life  produced  splendid  daring.  The  glory  of  England  in 
that  day  was  as  when  the  aloe  rushes  into  its  crimson 
flower.  Around  the  queen  stood  men  crowned  with  many 
laurels, —  not  like  the  pygmies  of  to-day,  but  men  of  strong 
passions,  of  deep  feelings,  of  large  hopes,  of  dauntless  en- 
durance, of  ardent  imagination,  of  magnificent  purposes. 
Think  of  the  day  when  Hooker  was  preaching  at  the  Tem- 
ple; and  Bacon  meditating  the  Novum  Organum;  and 
Spenser  writing  the  Faerie  Queene;  and  Sidney  fighting  in 
the  Netherlands;  and  Galileo  reading  the  secrets  of  the 
stars;  and  Drake  singeing  the  beard  of  the  King  of  Spain; 
and  Shakspeare,  Marlowe,  Chapman,  and  Ben  Jonson  were 
pouring  forth  all  the  passion  of  which  man's  heart  is  capa- 

•Froude,  "  Short  Studies  on  Great  Subjects." 


234  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

ble,  and  Milton  was  a  little  boy;  when  trade,  art,  science, 
learning,  burst  into  new  life;  when  England  was  acquiring 
the  empire  of  the  sea,  and  the  queen  was  telling  Mendoza 
—  in  quite  her  natural  voice,  and  as  though  it  was  the  most 
ordinary  thing  in  the  world,  though  he  was  ambassador  of 
a  king  at  whom  the  world  trembled  —  that,  if  he  talked  to 
her  about  Philip's  threats  again,  she  would  fling  him  into 
a  dungeon.  Yes!  England  was  the  England  of  Shakspeare 
and  Raleigh,  and  spoke  in  the  true  voice  of  England  then, 
because  her  sons  were  neither  cynical  unbelievers  nor 
gilded  effeminates,  but  feared  God,  and  were  noble  and 
great  and  true. 

And  this  era  of  the  Renascence  was,  on  its  religious 
side,  the  era  of  the  Reformation.  If  the  east  window  of 
Westminster  Abbey  —  the  gift  of  Ferdinand  the  Catholic 
and  Isabella  to  Henry  VII. ,  when  Prince  Arthur  married 
Katherine  of  Arragon  —  recalls  the  days  of  Popery  and  the 
Inquisition,  the  west  window  speaks  of  the  Reformation. 
In  these  our  days  love  of  Popery  shews  itself  in  coquetting 
with  dead  usages,  and  hatred  of  Popery  has  dwindled  down 
into  the  feeble  spite  of  religious  newspapers;  and  most 
men,  caring  nothing  about  either  tendency,  walk  in  the  cold 
mid-region  between  "a  boundless  scepticism  and  an  un- 
fathomable superstition."  But  in  those  days  hatred  of 
Popery  was  no  mere  intolerance  about  minor  religious  opin- 
ions. It  was,  and  had  a  right  to  be,  a  holy  and  mighty  pas- 
sion. It  meant  hatred  of  popes  like  Pius  V.,  who  sent  his 
soldiers  into  France  with  the  words,  "Slay  immediately 
whatever  heretics  fall  into  your  hands " ;  and  who  taught 
Englishmen  to  defy  and  plot  against  their  queen.  It  meant 
hatred  of  Moloch-fires  which  flamed  through  all  lands; 
hatred  of  queens  steeped  like  Mary  of  Scots  in  murder  and 


SIR    WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


235 


adultery;  hatred  of  generals  like  Alva,  reeking  with  the 
blood  of  saints;  hatred  of  blood  which  cried  to  Heaven  from 
an  earth  which  would  not  cover  her  slain.  Hatred  of  Popery 
meant  in  that  day  hatred  of  the  sanguinary  alliance  between 
priestly  usurpation  and  monarchic  despotism,  between  cruel 
tyranny  and  deadly  superstition.  It  meant  hatred  of  burn- 
ings, tortures,  butcheries;  hatred  of  the  dark,  crooked 
devil's  work  of  a  plotting,  murdering  Jesuitism,  which 
absolved  the  reckless  perjuries  of  the  conspirator  and  con- 
secrated the  cursed  dagger  of  the  assassin.  It  meant  hatred 
of  hell-born  leagues  between  murder  and  rebellion;  hatred 
of  the  spirit  of  the  Nihilist,  the  Fenian,  and  the  Inquisitor 
wielding  the  sword  of  the  tyrant  and  wearing  the  ephod  of 
the  priest.  But  with  Raleigh  —  born  when  the  fires  of 
Smithfield  were  barely  extinguished,  reading  Fox's  Mar- 
tyrs at  his  mother's  knee,  who  as  a  boy  had  fought  against 
Alva  in  the  Netherlands,  and  seen  Conde  die  at  Jarnac, 
and  been  involved  in  the  retreat  of  the  Huguenots  at  Mon- 
contour  —  whose  ears  had  thrilled  with  the  shrieks  of  St. 
Bartholomew,  and  who  knew  how  Philip  of  Spain  had 
laughed  aloud  when  he  heard  of  that  awful  massacre,  and 
how  Pope  Gregory  XIII.  had  struck  medals  and  sung  Te 
Deums  in  its  honour, —  to  Raleigh  hatred  of  Popery  was  in 
that  day  inevitably  one  with  loyalty  to  Elizabeth  and  love 
of  England,  and  passion  for  the  primary  rights,  the  natural 
liberty  and  free  conscience  of  mankind.  And,  because  he 
was  a  lifelong  foe  to  Popery,  he  was  a  lifelong  foe  to  Spain, 
which  was  then  trying  to  blight  the  whole  world  with  the 
upas  shadows  of  abhorrent  absolutism.  The  great  men  of 
Elizabeth  knew  that  the  triumph  of  Spain,  the  triumph  of 
Popery,  would  have  meant  the  holiness  of  racks  and  the 
beatitude  of  thumb-screws.  It  would  have  meant  that 


236  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  England  of  Elizabeth  would  have  reeked,  as  did  the 
England  of  James  II.,  with  the  odours  of  the  charnel- 
house.  It  was  this  that  made  Raleigh  fight  Papists,  in 
Ireland, —  which  he  called,  "not  the  commonweal,  but  the 
common  woe";  —  and  fight  Papists  in  France,  and  in  the 
Netherlands,  and  on  the  Armada,  and  in  the  New  World. 
It  was  this  that  made  him  burn  the  Spanish  fleet  in  Cadiz 
Bay.  It  was  this  that  made  him  tell  in  immortal  prose,  as 
Tennyson  has  told  in  immortal  verse,  that  death  of  Sir 
Richard  Grenville,  when  one  English  ship  fought  for  fifteen 
mortal  hours  against  fifty-three  Spanish  ships  at  the  Azores. 
Yes!  in  the  era  of  the  Reformation  hatred  of  Popery  meant 
love  of  truth,  love  of  England,  love  of  freedom,  love  of 
progress,  air,  and  light. 

But  nobly  as  Raleigh  served  the  cause  of  England  and 
the  cause  of  the  Reformation,  it  is  with  the  New  World 
and  its  colonization  that  his  name  will  be  most  gloriously 
and  most  permanently  connected. 

"Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way; 

The  first  four  acts  already  past, 
A  fifth  shall  close  the  drama  with  the  day ; 
Time's  noblest  offspring  is  the  last."  * 

To  Raleigh  and  the  old  seaworthies  of  England  the  New 
World  meant  Eldorado.  But  Spain  forsooth  claimed  the 
whole  of  this  New  World  by  virtue  of  a  trumpery  parch- 
ment signed  by  a  meddling  Italian  priest!  And  how  did 
this  land  of  promise  and  golden  dreams  fare  in  the  hands 
of  Popery  and  Spain?  The  blood  of  Montezuma  and  Ata- 
hualpa  cried  against  them.  The  tale  of  their  greed  and 
cruelty  rang  through  all  lands.  The  flames  woven  on  the 
banner  of  Cortez  were  the  accursed  emblem  of  the  Inquisi- 

*  Bishop  Berkeley. 


WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


237 


tion.  But  they  had  not  occupied  a  third  even  of  the  coast; 
and  was  that  land  of  boundless  wonder  and  beauty,  of 
boundless  fertility  and  wealth,  to  be  abandoned  to  them? 
Were  millions  of  innocent  Indians  to  be  treated  like  brute 
beasts?  Were  the  English,  whom  they  called  "Lutheran 
devils,"  to  be  handed  over  to  the  rack  and  the  galleys,  if 
they  ventured  to  trade, —  nay,  if  they  were  but  shipwrecked 
on  those  shores?  Not  if  Raleigh  could  help  it!  His 
genius  fixed  upon,  and  his  dauntless  patience  and  princely 
munificence  secured,  regions  which  had  almost  escaped  the 
notice  of  Spain.  On  the  colonization  of  Virginia  he 
spent  ^40,000,  and  was  ready  to  spend  his  whole  fortune 
to  the  last  coin.  Westminster  at  any  rate  has  herein  given 
him  his  due.  It  was  the  late  Dean  Stanley  who  called  him 
"the  Father  of  the  United  States."  It  was  Canon  Kings- 
ley  who  said,  "To  this  one  man,  under  the  providence 
of  God,  the  whole  United  States  of  America  owe  their 
existence." 

Let  us  glance  at  his  life  and  end.  If  you  would  judge 
of  his  jenith,  see  him  in  all  the  splendour  of  Durham 
House,  his  beautiful  wife  beside  him,  his  noble  boy  at 
his  knee;  sometimes  flashing  about  as  Captain  of  Eliza- 
beth's Guard,  in  his  armour  of  enamelled  silver;  some- 
times in  his  "doublet  of  white  satin,  all  embroidered  with 
rich  pearls,  and  a  weighty  rich  chain  of  great  pearls  around 
his  neck";  the  friend  of  Sidney,  the  patron  of  Spen- 
ser, the  companion  of  Ben  Jonson  and  Shakspeare,  Lord 
of  the  Stannaries,  Governor  of  Munster,  Governor  of  Jer- 
sey, Rear- Admiral  of  the  Fleet  against  the  Azores;  ruffling 
it  with  Leicester  and  Essex,  their  equal  in  manly  beauty; 
"lording  it  with  awful  ascendency"  in  the  fairyland  of  Glo- 
riana's  Court, — "A  man  at  whom  men  gazed  as  at  a  star." 


238  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Envy  not  his  splendour!  All  the  while  he  was  struggling 
in  a  network  of  base  intrigues.  Long  before  pride  and 
passion  led  him  into  sin  he  had  learned  —  as  his  poem 
"The  Lie"  shows  —  how  hollow  and  disappointing  it  all 
was.  And  then  see  the  plunge  right  down  to  the  very  nadir 
of  human  misery  and  ruin !  I  know  few  tragedies  to  equal 
those  last  twelve  years  of  his  in  the  Tower  of  London. 
Elizabeth  had  died  "with  the  whole  Book  of  Ecclesiastes 
written  on  her  mighty  heart,"  and  the  very  basest  and 
meanest  of  English  kings  —  with  no  fear  except  to  offend 
Spain,  and  no  money  except  to  lavish  on  infamous  favour- 
ites—  disgraced  her  throne.  Such  a  man  as  James  natu- 
rally hates  such  a  man  as  Raleigh.  His  fair  day  at  once 
drew  to  evening.  "I  am  left  of  all  men,"  he  wails,  "that 
have  done  good  to  many.  All  my  good  turns  forgotten, 
all  my  errors  revived  and  expounded  to  all  extremity  of 
ill,  all  my  services,  hazards,  and  expenses  for  my  country, 
—  plantings,  discoveries,  fights,  counsels,  and  whatso- 
ever—  dire  malice  has  now  covered  over."  Ah!  what  a 
shipwreck  of  man's  ingratitude!  and  how  common  on  the 
treacherous  sea  of  life!  And  then  came  the  midnight. 
Imprisoned,  robbed,  slandered,  yet  enriching  even  his 
prison  hours  with  the  "History  of  the  World  ";  in  vain  at- 
tempting suicide,  betrayed  by  his  own  king,  suffering  from 
fever,  losing  his  gallant  boy  in  battle  and  his  devoted 
adherent  by  suicide;  old,  gray-headed,  lame;  worn  with 
sickness,  anguish,  and  watching;  penniless,  ruined,  dis- 
honoured,—  finding  the  whole  world  turned  for  him  to 
thorns, —  after  being  belied  for  a  while  in  a  hubbub  of  lies, 
he  is,  at  a  day's  notice,  infamously  doomed  to  the  scaffold. 
In  all  those  awful  fires  God  had  purged  away  all  his  dross. 
He  had  long  learned  to  defy  Death  in  all  his  ugly  and  mis- 


SIR    WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


239 


shapen  forms.  "O  eloquent,  just,  and  mighty  Death!  "  he 
wrote  at  the  end  of  his  "History  of  the  World,"  "whom 
none  could  advise,  thou  hast  persuaded;  what  none  hath 
dared,  thou  hast  done;  and  whom  all  the  world  hath  flat- 
tered, thou  only  hast  cast  out  of  the  world  and  despised : 
thou  hast  drawn  together  all  the  far-stretched  greatness,  all 
the  pride,  cruelty,  and  ambition  of  men,  and  covered  it  all 
over  with  these  two  narrow  words,  ' Hie  jacet.' *'  "E'en 
such,"  he  wrote  in  his  cell  the  evening  before  his  execu- 
tion,— 

"  E'en  such  is  time,  who  takes  in  trust 

Our  youth,  our  hope,  our  all  we  have, 

And  pays  us  but  with  earth  and  dust; 

Which,  in  the  dark  and  silent  grave, 

When  we  have  wandered  all  our  ways, 

Shuts  up  the  story  of  our  days. 

But  from  this  earth,  this  grave,  this  dust, 

My  God  shall  raise  me  up,  I  trust !  " 

"Prythee,  let  me  see  the  axe,"  he  says  to  the  executioner. 
"Dost  thou  think,  man,  I  am  afraid  of  it?"  "A  sharp 
medicine,  but  a  sound  cure  for  all  diseases.  I  entreat 
you,"  he  says,  "that  you  will  all  join  with  me  in  prayer  to 
the  God  of  heaven,  whom  I  have  grievously  offended,  being 
a  man  full  of  all  vanity,  who  have  lived  a  sinful  life,  that 
the  Almighty  Goodness  will  forgive;  that  He  will  cast 
away  my  sins  from  me;  that  He  will  receive  me  into  ever- 
lasting life.  So  I  take  leave  of  you  all,  making  my  peace 
with  God."  He  says  but  one  more  word.  Asked  to  face 
towards  the  east,  he  says,  "  If  the  heart  be  right,  it  mat- 
ters not  which  way  the  head  lies."  So  dies  the  most  brill- 
iant of  Englishmen;  so  "fades  all  glory  into  darkness,  and 
all  life  into  dust,"  that  we  may  give  God  the  splendour. 
And  I,  for  one,  would  rather  take  my  stand  with  Raleigh, 


240  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

purged  in  the  seven-times-heated  furnace  of  affliction  and 
forgiven  for  his  Saviour's  sake,  than  with  millions  of  vul- 
gar and  every-day  respectabilities,  who  have  passed  their 
life  in  the  Pharisaism  of  false  orthodoxies  and  the  pettiness 
of  cheap  observances.  He  was  nearer  God,  I  believe,  by 
a  whole  heaven  than  millions  of  the  sleek  sinners  whom 
God  leaves  alone  to  succeed  and  prosper,  and  to  walk  in 
the  odour  of  self-satisfaction  and  of  sanctity,  —  the  sinners 
who,  in  their  own  eyes,  need  no  repentance, —  the  little 
hearts  that  know  not  how  to  forgive. 

I  rejoice  that  America  has  done  him  this  honour. 
Sebastian  Cabot,  who  landed  even  before  Columbus  on  the 
mainland  of  North  America,  was  born  at  Bristol  and  bred 
in  England.  In  the  privy-purse  expenses  of  Henry  VIII. 
we  find  this  curious  entry:  "To  the  man  who  found  the 
new  isle  ;£io."  The  man  was  Cabot;  the  isle,  Newfound- 
land! And  what  is  America  now?  A  mighty  civilization, 
destined,  perhaps,  to  surpass  ours;  a  land  of  illimitable 
hopes,  with  her  thirteen  Colonies,  her  forty-four  States, 
her  five  Territories,  spreading  our  race  and  tongue  from  a 
narrow  island  to  a  boundless  continent;  freed  from  us,  as 
Washington  said,  by  "reiterated  and  astonishing  interposi- 
tions of  Providence."  "You  are  the  advanced  guard  of  the 
human  race,"  said  Madame  de  Stael  to  an  American:  "you 
have  the  future  of  the  world."  If  glorious  has  been  our 
legacy  to  her,  glorious,  too,  have  been  her  gifts  to  us. 
She  has  given  us  a  type  of  manhood  supplied  "neither  by  the 
recusants  of  Maryland  nor  the  cavaliers  of  Virginia,  but 
by  the  Puritans  of  New  England  "  ;  *  a  type  of  manhood  "at 
once  manful  and  godly,  practical  and  enthusiastic,  prudent 
and  self-sacrificing,"  in  which,  because  it  was  inspired  by 
the  Reformation,  righteousness,  conduct,  conscience,  was  a 

•Rt.  Hon.  W.  E.  Gladstone. 


WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


241 


main  factor.  It  was  God's  will,  it  was  best  for  the  world, 
that  at  Lexington  "the  embattled  farmers"  should  have 
reared  the  banner  of  freedom,  and  "fired  the  shot  heard 
round  the  world."*  Henceforth  we  are  brother  nations, 
brothers  in  amity;  brothers  by  the  tongue  that  Milton  and 
Shakspeare  spoke ;  brothers  by  the  memories  of  one  common 
Bible;  brothers  for  the  progress  and  freedom  of  the  world; 
brothers  "to  discover  and  to  traffic,  to  colonize  and  to  civil- 
ize, until  no  wind  can  sweep  the  earth  which  does  not  bear 
the  echoes  of  an  English  voice. "f  America  has  given  us 
in  her  history  the  spectacle  of  an  army  of  a  million  and  a 
half  of  brave  soldiers  reabsorbed  without  a  struggle  into  the 
currents  of  a  peaceful  life.  She  has  given  us  not  only  a 
magnificent  type  of  the  grandeur  of  collective  humanity, 
but  also  noble  types  of  individual  humanity.  To  the 
viaticum  of  good  examples  her  contribution  has  not  been 
wanting.  In  literature  she  has  given  us  Motley,  and  Ban- 
croft, and  Prescott;  in  fiction,  Poe  and  Hawthorne;  in  elo- 
quence, Channing,  and  Clay,  and  Webster,  and  Everett, 
and  Wendell  Phillips;  in  poetry,  Emerson,  and  Longfellow, 
and  Whittier,  and  Holmes,  and  Bryant,  and  Lowell;  and, 
in  manhood,  specimens  of  men  pre-eminently  righteous, 
fearless,  uncorrupt.  Such  were  the  blameless,  unselfish 
Washington;  Franklin,  who  wrenched  the  lightning  from 
heaven  and  the  sceptre  from  tyrants;  \  the  strong,  homely, 
patient  Lincoln;  the  calm,  wise,  manly  Garfield;  the  fire 
and  courage  of  Theodore  Parker;  the  burning  faith  and 
magnificent  endurance  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison.  Worthy 
descendants  these  of  the  English  Puritan  and  the  French 
Huguenot ;  of  men  who  shook  off  the  oppression  of  the 
Stuarts  and  spurned  the  tyranny  of  the  Grand  Monarqtte  ; 

*  Emerson.  t  Kingsley,  "  Westward  Ho !  " 

$  "  Eripuit  caelo  fulmen,  sceptrumque  tyrannis." —  Turf  at. 


242  QUESTIONS   OF  THE  DAY. 

of  men  whose  fathers  fought  at  Naseby  and  Marston  Moor, 
at  Bunker  Hill  and  Saratoga.  And  she,  too,  has  suffered 
as  we  have  suffered.  She  has  washed  away  old  stains  in  the 
blood  of  Civil  War.  She  has  suffered  as  we  have  suffered, 
wept  as  we  have  wept,  for  the  cursed  crime  of  assassination. 
She,  too,  like  us,  like  France,  like  Germany,  like  Russia, 
has  seen  her  leaders  "thrust,  for  no  cause,  in  the  very 
frenzy  of  wantonness  and  wickedness  by  the  red  hand  of 
murder"*  from  life  to  death.  Like  us,  too,  more  than 
other  nations,  she  has,  thank  God,  kept  the  faith.  But 
she  has  still  a  vast  work  to  do.  She  has  won  Liberty. 
Will  she  keep  her  name  inviolate?  Will  she  love  her  so 
well  as  to  show  the  world  that  without  order  th^re  is  no 
liberty,  without  obedience  no  dominion?  Will  England 
and  America,  for  their  own  sake,  and  for  the  world's  sake, 
save  Liberty  from  being  degraded  from  a  divine  ideal  into 
a  monstrous  idol?  Will  her  politicians  and  ours  tremble 
lest  for  votes  they  should  trample  on  principles  or  palter 
with  God  for  gold?  Will  they  remember  the  great  words  of 
Chatham, —  "Where  law  ends,  tyranny  begins," — and  that 
there  is  no  tyranny  so  detestable  as  that  of  socialism?  The 
shield  of  liberty  is  broad  and  terrible,  and  it  is  the  aegis 
of  the  nations;  but  it  is  the  shield  of  men, —  not  of  vipers, 
not  of  hyenas  that  thirst  for  blood.  If  murder  and  rebel- 
lion crouch  beneath  that  shield,  let  them  be  dragged  out 
of  its  sacred  shadow.  It  is  the  shield  of  innocence,  not  of 
outrage;  of  obedience,  not  of  assassins.  Men  have  their 
rights;  nations  have  their  rights;  loyalty  and  faith  and 
virtue  have  their  rights  against  the  fiendishness  of  exe- 
crable men.  A  brave  statesman  f  said  that  never  had  gov- 
ernments more  need  to  be  strong  than  now, —  strong  for 
Freedom  against  the  anarchy  which  would  fain  assume  her 

•Hon.  J.  Elaine.  *Rt  Hon.  W.  E.  Forster.  M.P. 


SIR    WALTER  RALEIGH  AND  AMERICA. 


243 


aspect  and  would  sharpen  its  brutal  daggers  in  her  name. 
Yes,  the  day  has  come  when  neither  in  panic  nor  with 
thirst  for  vengeance,  but  girding  her  loins  for  work  in  all 
nations,  firm  yet  merciful,  Freedom  must  grasp  the  sword 
of  her  sister  Justice,  not  forgetting  that  it  is  a  sword  of 
celestial  temper  and  forged  in  the  armoury  of  God.  And 
the  day  may  come  when,  not  in  blind  passion,  but  with  the 
sternness  of  inexorable  duty,  she  must  with  that  sword 
stand  ready  to  smite  once  and  smite  no  more.  The  Eng- 
land of  Queen  Victoria,  the  America  of  Lincoln  and  of 
Garfield,  must  learn  to  hate  the  misshapen  broods  of  Athe- 
ism and  Nihilism  with  a  hatred  deadlier  even  than  that 
of  the  England  of  their  fathers  against  Popery  and  Spain. 
Execrable  was  the  Inquisition;  but  the  Inquisition  was 
holy  compared  to  that  raging  hatred  of  God  and  man,  that 
deification  of  lust  and  blood,  which,  adopting  the  enginery 
of  devils,  preaches  the  hell-born  gospel  of  petroleum  and 
of  dynamite.  The  day  has  come  when  the  nations  must  look 
this  devil  in  the  face,  and  form  against  it  their  committees 
of  safety. 

Oh,  in  the  Armageddon  shock  of  the  imminent  battle 
against  sin  and  antichrist;  against  the  false  prophets  of 
atheistic  socialism,  and  the  dragon  of  enmity  to  God's 
eternal  laws,  and  the  wild  beast  which  ever  arises  out  of 
the  abysses  of  fallen  and  God-abandoning  humanity, —  let 
America  range  herself  with  us  under  the  Banner  of  the 
Cross,  and  then  in  the  name  of  God,  the  Mighty  and  the 
Merciful,  we  shall  be  irresistible  for  the  blessing  of  the 
world. 


GENERAL  GRANT. 

FOURTEEN  years  have  not  passed  since  Dean  Stanley  of 
Westminster,  whom  Americans  so  much  loved  and  honored, 
was  walking  round  Westminster  Abbey  with  General  Grant, 
and  explaining  to  him  its  wealth  of  great  memorials. 
Neither  of  them  had  attained  the  allotted  span  of  human 
life  and  for  both  we  might  have  hoped  that  many  years 
would  elapse  before  they  went  down  to  the  grave,  full  of 
years  and  honours.  But  this  is  already  the  tenth  summer 
since  the  Dean  fell  asleep,  and  the  sixth  since  the  great 
soldier,  whose  sun  went  down  while  it  yet  was  day,  was 
laid  in  his  honoured  grave  amid  the  grief  of  thousands 
assembled  to  mourn  with  his  widow,  family,  and  friends. 
Yes :  life  at  the  best  is  but  as  a  vapour  that  passeth  away. 

"  The  glories  of  our  blood  and  state 
Are  shadows,  not  substantial  things." 

But,  when  death  comes,  what  nobler  epitaph  can  any  man 
have  than  this, — that,  having  served  his  generation,  by  the 
will  of  God  he  fell  asleep?  Little  can  the  living  do  for 
the  dead.  The  pomps  and  ceremonies  of  earthly  grandeur 
have  lost  their  significance;  but  Virtue  shall  be  honoured 
for  evermore. 

I  would  desire  to  say  simply  and  directly,  and,  if  with 
generous  appreciation,  yet  with  no  idle  flattery,  of  him 
whose  death  has  made  a  nation  mourn.  His  private  life, 
the  faults  and  failings  of  his  character,  whatever  they  may 
have  been,  belong  in  no  sense  to  the  world.  They  are  for 


GENERAL    GRANT. 


245 


the  judgment  of  God,  whose  merciful  forgiveness  is  neces- 
sary for  the  best  of  what  we  do  and  are.  We  touch  only  on 
his  public  actions  and  services,  the  record  of  his  strength, 
his  magnanimity,  his  self-control,  his  generous  deeds. 
His  life  falls  into  four  marked  divisions,  of  which  each 
has  its  own  lessons  for  us.  He  touched  on  them  himself 
in  part,  when  he  said, — 

"  Bury  me  either  at  West  Point,  where  I  was  trained  as  a 
youth;  or  at  Illinois,  which  gave  me  my  first  commission; 
or  at  New  York,  which  sympathized  with  me  in  my  misfor- 
tunes." 

His  wish  has  been  respected;  and  on  the  cliff  overhang- 
ing the  Hudson  his  monument  will  stand,  to  recall  to  the 
memory  of  future  generations  those  dark  days  of  a  nation's 
history  which  he  did  so  much  to  close. 

First  came  the  early  years  of  growth  and  training,  of  pov- 
erty and  obscurity,  of  struggle  and  self-denial.  Poor  and 
humbly  born,  he  had  to  make  his  own  way  in  the  world. 
God's  unseen  providence  directed  his  boyhood.  A  cadet- 
ship  was  given  him  at  the  Military  Academy  of  West 
Point;  .and  after  a  brief  period  of  service  in  the  Mexican 
War,  in  which  he  was  three  times  mentioned  in  de- 
spatches, seeing  no  opening  for  a  soldier  in  what  seemed 
likely  to  ^be  days  of  unbroken  peace,  he  settled  down 
to  a  humble  trade  in  a  provincial  town.  Citizens  of 
St.  Louis  still  remember  the  rough  backwoodsman  who 
sold  old  wood  from  door  to  door,  and  who  afterwards 
became  a  leather-seller  in  the  obscure  town  of  Galena. 
Those  who  knew  him  in  those  days  have  said  that, 
if  any  one  had  predicted  that  the  silent,  unprosperous, 
unambitious  man,  whose  chief  aim  was  to  get  a  plank  road 
from  his  shop  to  the  railway  depot,  would  become  twice 


246  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

President  of  the  United  States,  and  one  of  the  foremost 
men  of  his  day,  the  prophecy  would  have  seemed  extrava- 
gantly ridiculous.  But  such  careers  are  the  glory  of  the 
American  continent.  They  show  that  the  people  have  a 
sovereign  insight  into  intrinsic  force.  If  Rome  told  with 
pride  how  her  dictators  came  from  the  plough-tail,  America, 
too,  may  record  the  answer  of  the  President  who,  on  being 
asked  what  would  be  his  coat-of-arms,  answered,  proudly 
mindful  of  his  early  struggles,  "A  pair  of  shirt-sleeves." 
The  answer  showed  a  noble  sense  of  the  dignity  of  labor, 
a  noble  superiority  to  the  vanities  of  feudalism,  a  strong 
conviction  that  men  are  to  be  honoured  simply  as  men,  and 
not  for  the  prizes  of  birth  and  accident,  which  are  without 
them.  You  have  of  late  years  had  two  martyr  Presidents, 
both  of  them  sons  of  the  people.  One  was  the  homely 
man,  who  at  the  age  of  seven  was  a  farm  lad,  at  seventeen 
a  rail  splitter,  at  twenty  a  boatman  on  the  Mississippi, 
and  who  in  manhood  proved  to  be  one  of  the  most  honest 
and  God-fearing  of  modern  rulers.  The  other  grew  up 
from  a  shoeless  child  in  a  log  hut  on  the  prairies,  round 
which  the  wolves  prowled  in  the  winter  snow,  to  be  a 
humble  teacher  in  Hiram  Institute.  With  these  Presi- 
dents, America  need  not  blush  to  name  also  the  leather- 
seller  of  Galena.  Every  true  man  derives  his  patent  of 
nobleness  direct  from  God. 

Did  not  God  choose  David  from  the  sheepfolds,  from  fol- 
lowing the  ewes  great  with  young  ones,  to  make  him  the 
ruler  of  His  people  Israel?  Was  not  the  Lord  of  Life  and 
all  the  worlds  for  thirty  years  a  carpenter  at  Nazareth? 
Do  not  such  things  illustrate  the  prophecy  of  Solomon: 
"Seest  thou  a  man  diligent  in  his  business?  He  shall 
stand  before  kings;  he  shall  not  stand  before  mean  men"? 


GENERAL   GRANT. 


247 


When  Abraham  Lincoln  sat,  book  in  hand,  day  after  day 
under  the  tree,  moving  round  it  as  the  shadow  moved, 
absorbed  in  mastering  his  task;  when  James  Garfield  rang 
the  bell  at  Hiram  Institute  on  the  very  stroke  of  the  hour, 
and  swept  the  school-room  as  faithfully  as  he  mastered  his 
Greek  lesson;  when  Ulysses  Grant,  sent  with  his  team  to 
meet  some  men  who  came  to  load  his  cart  with  logs,  and 
finding  no  men,  loaded  the  cart  with  his  own  boy's 
strength, —  they  showed,  in  conscientious  duty,  qualities 
which  were  to  raise  them  to  become  kings  of  men.  When 
John  Adams  was  told  that  his  son,  John  Quincy  Adams, 
had  been  elected  President  of  the  United  States,  he  said, 
"He  has  always  been  laborious,  child  and  man,  from  in- 
fancy." 

But  the  youth  was  not  destined  to  die  in  the  deep  valley 
of  obscurity  and  toil  in  which  it  is  the  lot  —  and  perhaps 
the  happy  lot  — *•  of  most  of  us  to  spend  our  little  lives. 
The  hour  came;  the  man  was  needed.  In  1861  there  broke 
out  that  most  terrible  war  of  modern  days.  Grant  received 
a  commission  as  Colonel  of  Volunteers,  and  in  four  years 
the  struggling  toiler  had  been  raised  to  the  chief  command 
of  a  vaster  army  than  has  ever  been  handled  by  any  mortal 
man.  Who  could  have  imagined  that  four  years  would 
make  that  ^enormous  difference?  But  it  is  often  so.  The 
great  men  needed  for  some  tremendous  crisis  have  stepped 
often,  as  it  were,  out  of  a  door  in  the  wall  which  no  man 
has  noticed;  and,  unannounced,  unheralded,  without  pres- 
tige, have  made  their  way,  silently  and  single-handed,  to  the 
front.  And  there  was  no  luck  in  it.  It  was  a  work  of  in- 
flexible faithfulness,  of  indomitable  resolution,  of  sleepless 
energy,  of  iron  purpose  and  tenacity.  In  the  campaigns  at 
Fort  Donelson;  in  the  desperate  battle  at  Shiloh:  in  the 


248  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY, 

siege  of  Corinth;  in  the  successful  assaults  at  Vicksburg; 
in  battle  after  battle,  in  siege  after  siege, —  whatever  Grant 
had  to  do,  he  did  it  with  his  might.  Other  generals  might 
fail :  he  would  not  fail.  He  showed  what  a  man  could  do 
whose  will  was  strong.  He  undertook,  as  General  Sher- 
man said  of  him,  what  no  one  else  would  have  ventured, 
and  his  very  soldiers  began  to  reflect  something  of  his 
inflexible  determination.  His  sayings  revealed  the  man. 
"I  have  nothing  to  do  with  opinions,"  he  said  at  the 
outset,  "and  shall  only  deal  with  armed  rebellion."  "In 
riding  over  the  field,"  he  said  at  Shiloh,  "I  saw  that  either 
side  was  ready  to  give  away,  if  the  other  showed  a  bold 
front.  I  took  the  opportunity,  and  ordered  an  advance 
along  the  whole  line."  "No  terms,"  he  wrote  to  General 
Bucknerat  Fort  Donelson, —  and  it  is  pleasant  to  know  that 
General  Buckner  stood  as  a  warm  friend  beside  his  dying 
bed, — "no  terms  other  than  unconditional  surrender  can  be 
accepted."  "My  headquarters,"  he  wrote  from  Vicksburg, 
"will  be  on  the  field."  With  a  military  genius  which  em- 
braced the  vastest  plans  while  attending  to  the  smallest 
details,  he  defeated,  one  after  another,  every  great  general 
of  the  Confederates  except  General  Stonewall  Jackson. 
The  Southerners  felt  that  he  held  them  as  in  the  grasp  of 
a  vice;  that  this  man  could  neither  be  arrested  nor  avoided. 
For  all  this  he  has  been  severely  blamed.  He  ought  not 
to  be  blamed.  He  has  been  called  a  butcher,  which  is 
grossly  unjust.  He  loved  peace;  he  hated  bloodshed;  his 
heart  was  generous  and  kind.  His  orders  were  to  save 
lives,  to  save  treasure,  but  at  all  costs  to  save  his  country, 
and  he  did  save  his  country.  His  army  cheerfully  ac- 
cepted the  sacrifice,  wrote  its  farewells,  buckled  its  belts, 
and  stood  ready.  The  struggle  was  not  for  victory :  it  was 


GENERAL   GRANT. 


249 


for  existence.  It  was  not  for  glory:  it  was  for  life  and 
death.  Grant  had  not  only  to  defeat  armies,  but  to  anni- 
hilate their  forces;  to  leave  no  choice  but  destruction  or 
submission.  He  saw  that  the  brief  ravage  of  the  hurricane 
is  infinitely  less  ruinous  than  the  interminable  malignity 
of  the  pestilence,  and  that,  in  the  colossal  struggle,  victory 
—  swift,  decisive,  overwhelming  —  would  be  the  truest 
mercy.  In  silence,  in  determination,  in  clearness  of  in- 
sight, he  was  like  your  Washington  and  our  Wellington. 
He  was  like  them  also  in  this:  that  the  word  "cannot"  did 
not  exist  in  his  soldier's  dictionary,  and  what  he  achieved 
was  achieved  without  bluster.  In  the  hottest  fury  of  all  his 
battles  his  speech  was  never  known  to  be  more  than  "yea, 
yea,"  and  "nay,  nay."  He  met  General  Lee  at  Appomattox. 
He  received  his  surrender  with  faultless  delicacy.  He  im- 
mediately issued  an  order  that  the  Confederates  should  be 
supplied  with  rations.  The  moment  that  his  enemies  sur- 
rendered he  gave  them  terms  as  simple  and  as  generous  as 
a  brother  could  have  given  them, —  terms  which  healed  dif- 
ferences; terms  of  which  they  freely  acknowledged  the 
magnanimity.  Not  even  entering  the  capital,  avoiding  all 
ostentation,  undated  by  triumph  as  unruffled  by  adversity, 
he  hurried  back  to  stop  recruiting  and  to  curtail  the  vast 
expenses  of  the  country.  After  the  surrender  at  Appomattox 
Court  House,  the  war  was  over.  He  had  put  his  hand 
to  the  plough  and  looked  not  back.  He  had  dealt  blow 
after  blow,  each  following  where  the  last  had  struck;  he 
had  wielded  like  a  hammer  the  gigantic  forces  at  his  dis- 
posal, and  had  smitten  opposition  into  the  dust.  It  was 
a  mighty  work,  and  he  had  done  it  well.  Surely,  history 
has  shown  that  for  the  future  destinies  of  a  mighty  nation 
it  was  a  necessary  and  blessed  work !  The  Church  utters 


250  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

her  most  indignant  anathema  against  an  unrighteous  war, 
but  she  has  never  refused  to  honor  the  faithful  soldiers 
who  fight  in  the  cause  of  their  country  and  God.  The 
gentlest  and  most  Christian  of  modern  poets  has  used  the 
tremendous  expression  that 

"God's  most  dreaded  instrument 
In  working  out  a  pure  intent 
Is  man  arrayed  for  mutual  slaughter. 
Yea,  Carnage  is  His  daughter!" 

We  shudder  even  as  we  quote  the"  words;  but  yet  the 
cause  for  which  General  Grant  fought  —  the  honor  of  a  great 
people,  and  the  freedom  of  a  whole  race  of  mankind  —  was 
a  great  and  noble  cause.  And  the  South  has  accepted  that 
desperate  and  bloody  arbitrament.  Two  of  the  Southern 
generals,  we  rejoice  to  hear,  helped  to  bear  General  Grant's 
funeral  pall.  The  rancour  and  ill-feeling  of  the  past  are 
buried  for  ever  in  oblivion;  true  friends  have  been  made  out 
of  brave  foemen.  Americans  are  no  longer  Northerners 
and  Southerners,  Federals  and  Confederates;  but  they  are 
Americans.  "Do  not  teach  your  chi4dren  to  hate,"  .  .  . 
said  General  Lee  to  an  American  lady;  "teach  them  that 
they  are  Americans.  I  thought  that  we  were  better  off  as 
one  nation  than  as  two,  and  I  think  so  now."  "The  war  is 
over,"  said  Grant,  "and  the  best  sign  of  rejoicing  after 
victory  will  be  to  abstain  from  all  demonstrations  in  the 
field."  "Let  us  have  peace,"  were  the  memorable  words 
with  which  he  ended  his  brief  inaugural  address  as  Pres- 
ident. 

On  the  rest  of  the  great  soldier's  life  we  will  only  touch 
in  very  few  words.  As  Wellington  became  Prime  Minis- 
ter of  England,  and  lived  to  be  hooted  in  the  streets  of 
London,  so  Grant,  more  than  half  against  his  will,  became 


GENERAL    GRANT. 


251 


President,  and  for  a  time  lost  much  of  his  popularity.  He 
foresaw  it  all.  But  it  is  not  for  a  man  to  choose,  it  is  for 
a  man  to  accept,  his  destiny.  What  verdict  history  may 
pronounce  on  him  as  a  politician  I  know  not;  but  here,  and 
now,  the  voice  of  censure,  deserved  or  undeserved,  is  si- 
lent. When  the  great  Duke  of  Marlborough  died,  and  one 
began  to  speak  of  his  avarice,  "He  was  so  great  a  man," 
said  Bolingbroke,  "I  had  forgotten  he  had  that  fault." 

It  was  a  fine  and  delicate  rebuke,  and  we  do  not  intend 
to  rake  up  a  man's  faults  and  errors.  Those  errors,  what- 
ever they  may  have  been,  we  leave  to  the  mercy  of  the 
Merciful,  and  the  atoning  blood  of  his  Saviour.  We  speak 
only  in  gratitude  of  his  great  achievements,  beside  the 
grave.  Let  us  record  his  virtues  in  brass,  for  men's  ex- 
ample; but  let  his  faults,  whatever  they  may  have  been,  be 
writ  in  water.  Some  may  think  that  it  would  have  been 
well  for  Grant  if  he  had  died  in  1865,  when  steeples 
clanged  and  cities  were  illuminated  and  congregations  rose 
to  their  feet  in  his  honour.  Many  and  dark  clouds  over- 
shadowed the  last  of  his  days, —  the  blow  of  financial  ruin; 
the  dread  that  men  should  suppose  that  he  had  a  tarnished 
reputation;,  the  terrible  agony  of  an  incurable  disease.  But 
God's  ways  are  not  as  our  ways.  To  bear  that  sudden  ruin 
and  that  speechless  agony  required  a  courage  nobler  and 
greater  than  that  of  the  battlefield,  and  human  courage  grows 
magnificently  to  the  height  of  human  need.  "I  am  a  man," 
said  Frederick  the  Great,  "and  therefore  born  to  suffer." 
On  the  long  agonizing  death-bed,  Grant  showed  himself 
every  inch  a  hero,  bearing  his  agonies  and  trials  without 
a  murmur,  with  rugged  stoicism,  in  unflinching  fortitude; 
yes,  and  we  believe  in  a  Christian's  patience  and  a  Chris- 
tian's prayers.  Which  of  us  can  tell  whether  those  hours 


252  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

of  torture  and  misery  may  not  have  been  blessings  in  dis- 
guise; whether  God  may  not  have  been  refining  the  gold 
from  the  brass,  and  the  strong  man  have  been  truly  pu- 
rified by  the  strong  agony?  We  do  not  lack  here  in  Eng- 
land memorials  to  recall  the  history  of  your  country.  In 
Westminster  Abbey  is  the  grave  of  Andr6;  there  is  the 
monument  raised  by  grateful  Massachusetts  to  the  gallant 
Howe;  there  is  the  temporary  resting-place  of  George 
Peabody;  there  is  the  bust  of  Longfellow;  over  the  Dean's 
grave  there  is  the  faint  semblance  of  Boston  Harbor. 
Whatever  there  may  have  been  between  the  two  nations 
to  forget  and  forgive,  it  is  forgotten  and  forgiven.  "I 
will  not  speak  of  them  as  two  peoples,"  said  General 
Grant  at  Newcastle  in  1877,  "because,  in  fact,  we  are  one 
people,  with  a  common  destiny;  and  that  destiny  will  be 
brilliant  in  proportion  to  the  friendship  and  co-operation 
of  the  brethren  dwelling  on  each  side  of  the  Atlantic." 
Oh!  if  the  two  peoples  which  are  one  people  be  true  to 
their  duty  and  true  to  their  God,  who  can  doubt  that  in 
their  hands  are  the  destinies  of  the  world?  Can  anything 
short  of  utter  dementation  ever  thwart  a  destiny  so  mani- 
fest ?  Your  founders  were  our  sons :  it  was  from  our  Past 
that  your  Present  grew.  The  monument  of  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  is  not  that  nameless  grave  in  St.  Margaret's:  it 
is  the  State  of  Virginia.  Yours  and  ours  alike  are  the 
memories  of  Captain  John  Smith  and  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers,  of  General  Oglethorpe's  "strong  benevolence  of 
soul,"  of  the  apostolic  holiness  of  Berkeley,  and  the  burn- 
ing zeal  of  Wesley  and  Whitefield.  Yours  and  ours  alike 
are  the  plays  of  Shakspere  and  the  poems  of  Milton;  ours 
and  yours  alike  are  all  that  you  have  accomplished  in  lit- 
erature or  in  history,  —  the  songs  of  Longfellow  and  Bryant, 


GENERAL   GRANT. 


253 


the  genius  of  Hawthorne  and  of  Irving,  the  fame  of  Wash- 
ington, Lee,  and  Grant.  But  great  memories  imply  great 
responsibilities.  It  was  not  for  nothing  that  God  has 
made  England  what  she  is;  not  for  nothing  that  the  free 
individualism  of  a  busy  multitude,  the  humble  traders  of  a 
fugitive  people,  snatched  the  New  World  from  feudalism 
and  bigotry, —  from  Philip  II.  and  Louis  XIV.,  from  the 
Spaniards  and  from  Montcalm,  from  the  Jesuit  and  the  In- 
quisition, from  Torquemada  and  from  Richelieu, —  to  make 
it  the  land  of  the  Reformation  and  the  Republic  of  Chris- 
tianity and  of  Peace.  "Let  us  auspicate  all  our  proceed- 
ings in  America,"  said  Edmund  Burke,  "with  the  old 
church-cry,  'Sursum  corda!  '  But  it  is  for  America  to 
live  up  to  the  spirit  of  such  words,  not  merely  to  quote 
them  with  proud  enthusiasm.  We  have  heard  of 

"  New  times,  new  climes,  new  lands,  new  men,  but  still 
The  same  old  tears,  old  crimes,  and  oldest  ill." 

It  is  for  America  to  falsify  the  cynical  foreboding.  Let  her 
take  her  place  side  by  side  with  England  in  the  very  van  of 
freedom  and  of  progress,  united  by  a  common  language,  by 
common  blood,  by  common  measures,  by  common  interests, 
by  a  common  history,  by  common  hopes;  united  by  the 
common  glory  of  great  men,  of  which  this  great  "temple  of 
silence  and  reconciliation"  is  the  richest  shrine.  Be  it  the 
steadfast  purpose  of  the  two  peoples  who  are  one  people  to 
show  all  the  world  not  only  the  magnificent  spectacle  of 
human  happiness,  but  the  still  more  magnificent  spectacle 
of  two  peoples  which  are  one  people,  loving  righteousness 
and  hating  iniquity,  inflexibly  faithful  to  the  principles  of 
eternal  justice  which  are  the  unchanging  laws  of  God. 


GENERAL   GARFIELD. 

"  His  Lord  said  unto  him,  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant." —  MATT. 
xxv.  21. 

PRESIDENT  JAMES  GARFIELD  has  passed  away.  I  desire 
to  add  my  tribute  of  sympathy,  sincere,  but  humble,  to  that 
of  all  other  Englishmen.  I  do  so  partly  because  I  have  re- 
ceived much  encouragement  from  the  American  people,  and 
partly  because  I  would  not  miss  the  opportunity  of  pointing 
to  the  lifelong  example  of  so  great  and  good  a  man.  That 
dastard  shot  of  a  miserable  assassin  has  sent  to  his  grave  a 
man  of  princely  nature;  but  no  weapon  can  murder  good- 
ness, no  weapon  can  strike  down  the  power  of  a  fair  life 
or  its  influence  upon  the  world. 

"Good  deeds  cannot  die: 
They  with  the  sun  and  moon  renew  their  light, 
For  ever  blessing  those  who  look  on  them." 

On  the  day  when  General  Garfield  was  inaugurated 
President  of  the  United  States,  he  kissed  in  the  public 
assembly  his  venerable  mother.  Cynics  and  men  who  adore 
small  conventional  proprieties  sneered  at  the  act;  but  it 
was  an  act  of  grand  and  beautiful  simplicity,  worthy  of  a 
hero  and  a  good  man.  If  the  boy  who  at  eighteen  had  to 
earn  his  living  by  manual  and  even  menial  labour  as- 
cended, at  fifty,  one  of  the  loftiest  pinnacles  of  earthly  great- 
ness, his  splendid  prosperity  was  due  in  no  small  degree 
to  that  aged  mother.  It  is  now  sixty  years  ago  that  in 


GENERAL    GARFIELD. 


255 


a  poor  log  hut  in  the  backwoods  of  Ohio  the  child  was 
born.  He  came  of  a  good,  strong,  independent  stock.  His 
father's  ancestor  was  a  Puritan;  his  mother's,  a  Huguenot. 
The  one  had  fled  from  the  tyranny  of  Charles  I.  in  Eng- 
land :  the  other  had  been  exiled  by  the  tyranny  of  Louis 
XIV.  in  France.  The  parents  of  the  child  were  living  in 
the  deepest  poverty.  Their  log  hut  was  only  eighteen  feet 
by  twenty.  It  had  neither  sash  nor  glass:  light  reached  it 
through  greased  paper  placed  over  rude  apertures.  The 
furniture  consisted  chiefly  of  three-legged  stools.  The  chil- 
dren slept  upon  straw  in  the  loft.  Yet  many  a  child  born 
to  the  purple  might  have  envied  the  pure  happiness  of  that 
lonely  hut.  But  soon  it  was  visited  by  terrible  affliction. 
A  forest  fire  broke  out,  and  the  brave  father  died  of  exhaus- 
tion from  the  efforts  which  saved  his  home.  His  last 
words  to  his  wife  as  he  looked  on  his  four  children  were, 
"I  have  planted  four  saplings  in  these  woods:  I  must  now 
leave  them  to  your  care."  He  was  buried  in  a  rough  chest 
in  the  corner  of  the  wheat-field;  and  the  widow  with  her 
little  ones,  ,of  whom  James  was  then  a  babe,  was  left  to 
face  the  privations  of  a  winter  in  the  woods.  Food  was 
often  very  scarce.  Often,  as  the  children  lay  awake  in  the 
long,  dark  nights,  they  heard  the  howling  of  the  wolves  and 
the  weird  scream  of  the  panthers  in  the  snow  around  their 
doors.  But  brave  hearts  can  conquer  anything.  Thomas, 
the  eldest  boy,  was  only  eleven  years  old,  yet  he  worked 
the  little  farm.  The  mother,  as  she  sat  at  her  spinning- 
wheel,  often  contented  herself  with  a  single  meal  a  day. 
The  girl  of  fifteen  carried  her  little  brother  James  on  her 
back  to  school.  He  was  nearly  four  before  he  had  a  pair 
of  shoes  even  in  winter,  and  his  first  pair  was  bought  out 
of  his  brother's  earnings.  From  earliest  years  the  child 


256  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

worked  hard  both  to  earn  his  bread  and  to  master  the  rudi- 
ments of  knowledge.  His  school  was  at  a  distance,  and 
was  only  held  for  a  part  of  the  year.  It  was  but  seldom 
that  the  family  even  got  the  chance  of  worship.  There 
is  not  a  boy  in  our  schools  who  up  to  the  age  of  six- 
teen has  not  had  better  chances  of  learning  than  the  late 
President  of  the  United  States.  But  the  mother  trained 
her  boys  and  girls  in  a  very  simple  creed  and  in  the  Holy 
Book,  and  taught  them  from  the  first  that  "where  there's 
a  will  there's  a  way,"  and  that  "the  biggest  coward  in  the 
world  is  the  man  who  does  not  dare  to  do  what  is  right." 
Even  at  six  years  old,  the  little  boy  had  to  help  on  the 
farm,  to  milk  cows,  to  chop  wood,  to  dig  vegetables  and 
at  night,  lying  flat  on  the  floor,  he  would  read  by  the  blaze 
of  the  pine-wood  fire,  which  was  the  only  light  they  could 
afford.  Do  you  think  that  this  was  a  hard  training  for  the 
little  lad?  Yes,  hard,  but  hardy  and  bracing.  It  made 
him  what  he  became.  It  was  God's  education  for  him, 
better  than  man's.  He  had  his  dear  home,  his  great- 
souled  mother,  his  brave,  bright-eyed,  helpful  brother  and 
sisters;  he  was  far  from  base  examples;  he  was  being  nur- 
tured in  the  faith  and  fear  of  God;  he  lived  amid  the 
sights  and  sounds  of  nature,  he  had  health  and  strength, 
and  faith  and  purity,  and  hope.  It  is  no  disadvantage  to  a 
brave  true  heart  to  tread  the  daisied  path,  and  breathe  the 
fine  mountain  air  of  poverty.  It  is  infinitely  better  than 
to  be  rocked  and  dandled  on  the  lap  of  luxury,  petted  and 
pampered  and  spoiled  into  selfishness  by  effeminate  indul- 
gence. When  that  shoeless  and  ill-clad  boy,  whose  hands 
were  hard  with  the  axe  and  the  mattock,  grew  up  to  win  a 
great  battle,  and  to  achieve  in  two  weeks  what  trained  gen- 
erals could  not  do  in  two  months,  President  Lincoln  char- 


GENERAL   GARFTELD. 


257 


acteristically  remarked  that  it  was  "because,  when  a  boy, 
he  had  to  work  for  his  living." 

So,  working  at  the  farm,  working  in  the  carpenter's 
shop,  working  at  building,  lying  on  the  boards  by  the  light 
of  pitch-pine  knots  to  learn  arithmetic  in  the  long,  dark 
evenings,  doing  heartily  all  that  he  did,  he  reached  the  age 
of  fourteen.  Apprenticed  at  that  age  to  a  blacksalter,  and 
thrown  among  coarse,  swearing,  drunken  blackguards,  in  a 
repulsive  trade,  yet,  like  Joseph  in  the  court  of  Pharaoh,  he 
held  his  own,  and  lost  neither  innocence  nor  faith.  Re- 
pelled from  a  sea  life  by  the  drunken  brutality  of  a  captain, 
he  became  a  barge-boy  on  a  canal,  fell  fourteen  times  in  one 
year  into  the  water,  and  was  once  saved  in  a  manner  so 
strange  that  he  regarded  it  as  directly  providential.  Here, 
too,  among  low,  whiskey-drinking,  blaspheming  bullies, 
the  strong  boy  was  pure,  and  firm,  and  temperate,  and  thor- 
oughly respected,  and  even  beloved.  Stricken  with  ague, 
he  barely  struggled  home;  and,  arriving  late  at  night,  he 
saw  his  m6ther  kneeling  before  an  open  book,  and  heard 
her  pray,  "Give  Thy  strength  unto  Thy  servant,  and  save 
the  son  of  Thine  handmaid."  He  had  struggled  back  to 
his  home  cabin  only  just  in  time,  for  next  day  he  was 
stricken  down  with  a  terrible  illness.  That  sickness  was  the 
turning-point  of  his  life.  "It  is  a  great  thing,"  he  said 
years  afterward,  "when  a  young  man  determines  to  devote 
several  years  to  the  accomplishment  of  a  definite  work." 
He  determined  to  become  a  scholar.  On  his  recovery,  very 
shabbily  and  scantily  dressed,  and  with  only  a  few  shillings 
of  money  in  his  pocket,  awkward,  bashful,  ill-trained,  the 
boy  went  to  a  school,  paying  his  own  way  at  it  by  manual 
labour,  and  by  teaching  in  the  holidays.  Then  he  made 
his  way  to  a  higher  school,  partly  paying  his  way  there 


258  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

also  by  acting  as  bell-ringer  and  floor-sweeper.  He  was 
now  nineteen;  and  then  he  determined  to  go  to  college, 
still  earning  his  bread  by  his  own  efforts,  and  determining 
not  to  cost  a  farthing  to  his  widowed  mother.  Making 
himself  every  year  a  riper  scholar,  and  so  becoming  a 
highly-valued  teacher  at  the  school  where  he  had  been 
trained,  he  grew  more  widely  known  as  a  speaker,  a 
preacher,  a  strong  and  true  man,  until  he  was  elected  a 
senator,  first  of  his  native  State,  and  then  of  his  country. 
Then  the  Civil  War  broke  out  between  the  North  and 
South.  In  that  war,  by  heroic  courage  and  indomitable 
perseverance,  he  showed  himself  as  great  a  soldier  as  he 
had  been  a  senator  and  schoolmaster.  He  was  appointed 
a  general,  performed  some  acts  of  splendid  bravery,  rose 
higher  and  higher  in  the  estimation  of  his  countrymen, 
until  in  1880,  at  the  age  of  fifty,  he  was  elected  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States.  He  had  hardly  entered  on 
his  office,  had  not  had  time  to  trample  on  the  corruption 
which  as  an  honest  man  he  hated,  had  not  enjoyed  the 
fruits  of  his  prosperity,  or  given  to  America  the  full  ben- 
efit of  his  tried  integrity  and  manly  wisdom,  when  the  shot 
of  a  mean,  needy,  greedy,  morbid  creature,  born,  as  it 
were,  out  of  the  scum  which  fringes  the  vilest  waves  of 
humanity,  wrenched  from  him  a  glorious  heritage  of  op- 
portunity, and  doomed  him  to  eleven  weeks  of  deplorable 
agony,  crowned  by  a  simple,  heroic  death,  and  a  funeral 
at  which  not  only  his  own  mourning  countrymen  in  their 
many  myriads,  but  even  foreign  kings  and  foreign  na- 
tions, shed  unfeigned  tears. 

That  act  of  assassination,  of  peril  to  mankind  from  the 
existence  of  such  wretched,  unrestrained,  desperate,  dis- 
appointed miscreants  as  his  murderer;  the  fact  that  within 


GENERAL    GARFIELD. 


259 


so  short  an  interval  the  same  desperate  and  envious  egotism 
should  have  smitten  down  the  Autocrat  of  an  absolute  em- 
pire (the  Czar  Alexander)  and  the  chosen  President  of 
a  free  republic  is  infamous.  General  Garfield  himself  had 
remarked,  on  the  day  after  the  murder  of 'Abraham  Lincoln, 
that  "  it  was  not  one  man  who  killed  Abe  Lincoln  but  the 
embodied  spirit  of  tyranny  and  slavery,  inspired  with  a 
fearful  and  despairing  hate."  The  same  may  be  said  of 
his  own  murder.  But  let  us  turn  from  this  abhorrent 
theme,  to  speak  of  the  character  of  the  late  President  him- 
self in  its  manhood  and  sinrplicity.  These,  not  the  suc- 
cess of  his  life,  render  his  memory  precious. 

"  On  either  shore  not  hard  to  find 
The  lofty  aim,  the  godlike  speech, 
The  dauntless  heart ;  but  who  shall  reach 
Thy  grand  simplicity  of  mind  ?  " 

From  boyhood  to  manhood  he  was  royally  faithful  to  the 
truth  tha't 

"  The  rank  is  but  the  guinea's  stamp, 
A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that." 

It  was  said  of  him  by  an  eminent  American,  u  He  sought 
not  popularity:  he  sought  to  make  himself  a  man."  "He 
made  himself  a  man,"  said  the  president  of  his  college. 
"He  was  so  human,"  said  the  American  minister.  It  was 
his  own  ideal.  When  asked,  as  a  youth,  what  he  was 
going  to  be,  he  answered:  "I  have  undertaken  to  make 
a  man  of  myself  first.  If  I  succeed,  I  may  make  some- 
thing else  afterwards.  If  I  do  not  succeed,  I  shall  not  be 
fit  for  much  anyway."  Learn  this  lesson,  I  entreat  you, 
you  who  are  young  men.  No  dignity  you  can  ever  win  is 
comparable  to  the  dignity  of  being  a  true  man,  a  son  of 


26o  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

God,  an  heir  of  immortality,  a  faithful  soldier  and  servant 
of  Christ.  It  is  indeed  an  immense  pretension.  And 
it  depends  on  what  you  are,  not  in  the  least  on  how  you 
get  on.  Why  did  all  England  join  with  America  in 
mourning  for  General  Garfield?  The  answer  comes  in 

Shakspere's  lines, — 

"  Give  me  that  man 

That  is  not  passion's  slave,  and  I  will  wear  him 
In  my  heart's  core,  aye,  in  my  heart  of  heart." 

There  are  many  men  in  England  and  America  greater  than 
he,  more  eminent,  more  eloquent,  more  learned :  a  few  years 
ago  we  had  barely  heard  of  him ;  but  there  is  no  man  in 
England  or  America  braver  and  better  in  simple  manhood. 
He  was  one  of  nature's  nobles,  one  of  God's  own  gentle- 
men, who  adorn  any  station  of  life,  whether  that  of  a 
labourer  or  that  of  a  prince;  and  he  set  an  example  which 
all  may  follow,  of  which  all  may  be  proud.  When  the 
fierce  glare  of  publicity  was  turned  upon  his  slightest 
actions,  when  his  past  life  was  revealed  to  the  world 
down  to  its  smallest  particulars,  there  came  to  light  no 
record  of  him  which  was  not  honourable.  When  for  eleven 
weeks  the  attention  of  myriads  was  turned  to  the  bed  of 
agony  on  which  his  magnificent  health,  born  of  purity  and 
temperance, —  the  stuff  out  of  which  heroic  natures  are 
moulded, —  enabled  him  to  wrestle  for  so  long  with  Death, 
and  keep  him  at  arm's  length,  he  well  deserved  the  words 
which  have  been  applied  to  him,  that 

"  He  nothing  common  did  or  mean 
Upon  that  memorable  scene  "  ; 

and  when  he  whispered,  "Shall  I  live  in  History?"  the 
friend  who  answered,  "Yes!  and  still  more  in  the  hearts  of 
men,"  said  nothing  but  the  simplest  truth. 


GENERAL    GARFIELD.  26l 

But  now  what  is  very  important  for  us  to  learn  is, 
"How  did  he  make  himself, —  how  train  himself  to  be  a 
man  ?  " 

Well,  in  many  ways.  He  trained  himself  to  be  a 
man  by  watchfulness  of  opportunity.  It  has  been  said 

that 

"  There  is  a  deep  nick  in  Time's  restless  wheel 
For  each  man's  good  " ; 

but  we  may  add  that  the  wheel  revolves  so  fast  that  most 
men  miss  the  nick.  They  are  unprepared  for  the  tide* 
when  it  is  at  the  flood.  Now  General  Garfield  missed  no 
opportunity  which  God  gave  him.  He  once  pointed  out  to* 
a  class  of  young  men  that  the  comb  of  the  roof  of  a  certain 
court-house  divided  the  drops  of  rain,  sending  those  that 
fell  to  the  south  side  towards  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and 
those  on  the  north  side  to  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence;  and 
that  a  mere  breath  of  air,  or  the  flutter  of  a  bird's  wing,; 
sufficed  to  determine  the  destiny  of  those  raindrops. 

"It  is  so  with  your  lives,  my  young  friends.  A  passing 
event,  perhaps  of  trifling  importance  in  your  view,  the 
choice  of  a  book  or  companion,  a  right  resolve,  a  stirring 
purpose,  the  association  of  an  hour  may  prove  a  turning- 
point  of  your  lives."  And  he  made  himself  a  man  by 
self-reliance.  He  saw  that  it  was  "pluck,  not  luck,"  which 
wins  the  day;  and  that,  while  luck  is  a  will-of-the-wisp 
which  leads  to  ruin,  steady  effort  never  fails.  "There  is," 
he  said,  "no  more  foolish  thought  than  the  common  one  by 
which  the  idle  and  the  worthless  delude  themselves  that 
by  and  by  'something  will  turn  up'  in  their  favour. 
Things  don't  turn  up  in  this  world,  unless  some  one  turns 
them  up."  "Occasion  cannot  make  you  spurs,  young  men. 
If  you  expect  to  wear  spurs,  you  must  win  them.  If  you 


QU£STIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

wish  to  use  them,  you  must  buckle  them  to  your  own  heels 
before  you  go  into  the  fight.  Whatever  you  -win  in  life 
you  must  conquer  by  your  efforts.  Poverty  is  uncomforta- 
ble, as  I  can  testify;  but,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  the  best 
thing  that  can  happen  to  a  young  man  is  to  be  tossed  over- 
board, and  compelled  to  sink  or  swim  for  himself.  No  one 
is  drowned  who  is  worth  saving."  Thus  it  was  that  he 
utilized  what  he  called  "the  magnificent  possibilities  of 
life."  And  it  was  by  work.  "If  the  power  to  do  hard 
work,"  he  said,  "is  not  talent,  it  is  the  best  possible  sub- 
stitute for  it."  And  he  made  himself  a  man  not  only  by 
work,  but  by  thoroughness.  When,  as  a  boy  of  thirteen, 
he  had  to  plane  timber,  he  used  with  the  sweat  of  his  hon- 
est brow,  to  plane  100  boards  of  12  feet  a  day.  When  he 
had  to  chop  wood,  his  axe  rang  so  merrily  that  he  chopped 
two  cords  a  day.  When  he  was  a  canal  boy,  no  canal  boy 
cared  better  for  his  barge  and  his  mules.  When  he  had  to 
ring  the  school-bell  at  five  every  morning,  it  was  always 
rung  to  the  very  stroke  of  the  minute;  and,  when  he  had  to 
sweep  rooms,  they  were  swept  as  if  he  had  a  pride  in  mak- 
ing them  clean;  and,  when  he  studied,  he  studied  as  hard  and 
as  well  as  he  swept  rooms.  And  so  it  was  that  he  did  all 
duties,  the  meanest  no  less  than  the  grandest,  as  unto  God, 
and  not  unto  men.  Such  a  man  cannot  fail.  Let  any  one 
of  you  be  such  a  man,  and  you  will  soon  find  that  the  world 
cannot  do  without  you.  It  requires  no  greatness  to  be 
such  a  man:  it  only  requires  moral  qualities  which  are  as 
free  to  you  as  the  sunshine.  And  I  tell  you  the  world  is 
looking  everywhere  for  such  men,  and  can  scarcely  ever 
find  them.  There  are  plenty  of  gluttons,  plenty  of  dandies, 
plenty  of  drunkards,  plenty  of  egotists,  plenty  of  cheats, 
plenty  of  young  men  who  care  nothing  for  their  parents  or 


GENERAL    GARFIELD. 


263 


for  God's  law,  but  only  for  their  own  selfish  frivolities  and 
their  own  vile  lusts;  but,  oh!  the  inflexibly  honest,  the 
pure,  the  just,  the  modest,  the  strenuous,  the  thoroughly 
faithful,  —  where  are  they?  And  it  was  by  courage  that  he 
made  himself  a  man.  His  ideal  was  the  man  who  dared  to 
look  the  devil  in  the  face,  and  tell  him  he  is  a  devil. 
Garfield,  even  as  a  boy,  because  he  was  pure,  because  he 
was  temperate,  because  he  was  honest  and  fearless,  could 
face  a  bully  and  thrash  a  brute;  and  that  was  why  he  could, 
as  a  man,  save  a  regiment  from  starving  by  steering  a  boat 
at  night  up  and  down  a  swollen  and  perilous  river,  and  .an 
army  from  ruin  by  riding  a  horse  through  a  storm  of  shot 
and  shell.  And  once  more  he  made  himself  a  man,  a  true, 
right  man,  not  a  mere  fever  or  appetite,  not  a  mere  disso- 
lute miscreant  like  his  murderer, —  by  self-respect.  He 
would  never  sell  his  principles  for  popularity.  He  would 
never  deflect  an  inch  from  rectitude,  in  order  to  win  suc- 
cess. He  knew  that  the  life  was  more  than  meat,  and  the 
body  than  raiment.  "I  desired,"  he  said,  "the  approba- 
tion of  Congress;  but  I  desire  still  more  the  approbation 
of  one  person,  and  his  name  is  Garfield.  He  is  the  only 
man  that  I  am  compelled  to  sleep  with,  and  eat  with,  and 
live  with,  and  die  with;  and,  if  I  could  not  have  his 
approbation,  I  should  have  bad  companionship." 

But,  grand  as  were  all  these  qualities  which  had  set 
their  seal  upon  his  brow  "to  give  the  world  assurance  of  a 
man,"  the  best  of  all  was  that  he  was  a  good  man,  a  Chris- 
tian man.  Even  as  a  boy,  he  showed  something  of  this  in 
the  mercy  which  would  never  allow  so  much  as  a  dog  or  a 
cat  to  be  hurt,  and  would  insist  that  the  youngest  should 
have  their  fair  share  in  the  school  games.  As  a  man,  he 
said,  "There  are  some  who  call  it  a  defect  in  my  character 


264  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

that  I  should  hate  no  one."  But,  young  men,  he  was  not 
ashamed  to  be,  and  before  all  the  world  to  own  himself,  a 
Christian.  He  was  not  one  of  those  vain,  ignorant, misguided 
youths  who  think  manliness  is  exhibited  by  vicious  indul- 
gence, that  if  a  man  is  pure  in  life,  and  will  not  swear,  and 
will  not  game,  and  will  not  drink,  and  will  not  loaf  about 
the  thievish  corners  of  the  streets,  and  will  not  do  just  what 
other  young  men  do,  therefore  he  must  be  a  milksop.  He 
could  have  thrashed  any  five  of  such  wretched  and  dissolute 
idlers,  because  he  had  been  virtuous  from  his  very  boy- 
hood. He  could  have  said,  like  Sir  Galahad  of  old, — 

"My  good  blade  carves  the  casques  of  men, 

My  tough  lance  thrusteth  sure, 
My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten, 
Because  my  heart  is  pure." 

He  knew  that  God's  laws  are  the  most  eternal  thing  there 
is.  He  not  only  died  fearing  God,  but  he  lived  fearing 
God.  "His  moral  character,"  said  one  who  knew  him  at 
college,  "is  the  fit  crown  of  his  physical  and  intellectual 
nature.  His  heart  is  kind,  his  soul  pure,  his  habits 
simple,  his  generosity  unbounded."  An  old  friend  said 
of  him,  "I  have  never  found  anything  to  compare  with 
Garfield's  heart."  His  mighty  faith  once  stopped  a  move- 
ment which  might  have  grown  into  a  terrible  massacre. 
The  people  of  New  York,  raging  with  terrible  excitement, 
had  assembled  in  an  armed,  tumultuous  crowd  to  avenge 
the  murder  of  President  Lincoln,  when  a  man  of  command- 
ing presence,  bearing  a  small  flag,  stepped  forward,  and 
lifting  his  arm  towards  heaven,  said  in  a  voice  which  rang 
to  the  farthest  limits  of  the  crowd :  "  Fellow-citizens,  clouds 
and  darkness  are  round  about  Him,  His  pavilion  is  dark 


GENERAL    GARFIELD. 


265 


waters  and  thick  clouds  of  the  skies.  Justice  and  judg- 
ment are  the  habitations  of  His  throne.  Mercy  and  truth 
shall  go  before  Him.  Fellow-citizens,  God  reigns,  and 
the  government  still  lives."  The  raging  crowd  was  hushed 
to  stillness. 

"  He  called  across  the  tumult,  and  the  tumult  fell." 

Thank  God,  I  say,  for  such  a  man!  America  may 
well  be  proud  of  him.  Humanity  itself  may  take  courage 
when  it  can,  by  God's  blessing,  produce  such  noble  sons. 
He  said  that  in  the  prairies  whole  companies  and  regiments  of 
bright-eyed,  clear-browed,  princely  lads,  were  being  trained 
to  be  his  peers.  Ah!  if  so,  a  land  which  can  rear  and  can 
recognize  such  men  —  men  so  great  in  simple  goodness  — 
must  indeed  have  a  splendid  future.  And  who  knows  but 
what  God  raised  him  to  that  high  position  that  the  wealth 
and  worth  of  a  character  which  would  otherwise  have  told 
only  upon  the  few  should  stand  forth  as  an  example  and  as  an 
encouragement  to  all  the  world,  a  stimulus  to  that  emula- 
tion which  makes  nations  great  ?  "  What  have  I  done,  that  I 
should  thus  cruelly  be  made  to  suffer?"  exclaimed  his  poor 
wife,  when  she  was  first  told  that  her  husband  had  been 
shot.  Ah!  how  often,  how  many  myriads  of  times,  has 
that  despairing  question  been  asked  in  the  miseries,  the 
inevitable  miseries,  of  human  lives!  And  who  can  answer 
it  ?  Man  cannot  answer  it ;  but  there  falls  gently  a  voice 
from  heaven,  "What  I  do  thou  knowest  not  now,  but  thou 
shalt  know  hereafter."  But  perhaps  in  this  instance  we 
may  be  able  to  see  a  little  of  the  answer.  General 
Garfield  in  the  American  Civil  War  undertook  a  most 
perilous  ride  with  two  orderlies  to  carry  information  to 
General  Thomas  and  save  the  Northern  forces  from  defeat 


266  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

at  the  battle  of  Chickamauga.  They  rode  straight  into 
an  ambush  of  the  enemy.  The  two  soldiers  and  their 
horses  were  instantly  shot  dead.  Garfield,  dashing  the 
spurs  into  his  horse's  flanks,  leaped  a  fence  into  a  cotton 
field.  Seeing  his  enemies  loading  for  a  volley,  he  dashed 
across  the  field  in  a  zigzag  course  up  a  hill  to  foil  their 
arms.  They  fired  and  wounded  his  horse.  Before  he  could 
reach  the  crest  of  the  hill,  a  second  volley  flashed  upon 
him,  and  the  bullets  whizzed  about  his  head;  but  he  reached 
the  crest,  and  a  ride  of  twenty  miles  more  over  broken, 
ground  often  amid  a  hurricane  of  death,  brought  him  to  the 
side  of  General  Thomas.  His  horse  fell  dead  at  his  feet, 
but  the  army  was  saved.  His  life  was  then  spared  as  by  a 
miracle,  just  as  it  had  been  saved  as  by  a  miracle  when  as 
a  boy  he  fell  into  the  black  canal  at  midnight.  But  had 
he  died  as  a  boy,  or  even  as  a  man  in  the  war,  the  world 
would  have  heard  little  or  nothing  of  him;  nor  would  that 
life  of  "ever  strengthening  tendency  and  fulfilment"  have 
been  recorded,  as  it  now  will  be  recorded  in  history  to 
elevate  mankind.  It  would  have  been  well  for  many  a 
man's  own  fame  and  character  if  he  had  died  at  some 
moment  of  great  achievement:  it  was  only  well  for  General 
Garfield,  because  it  was  well  for  the  world's  example.  "It 
was  through  the  manliness,  the  patience,  the  religious  for- 
titude of  the  splendid  victim,  in  his  hour  of  agony  that  the 
tie  of  human  brotherhood  was  thrilled  to  a  consciousness 
of  its  sacred  function."  His  death,  the  death  of  a  man  who 
could  turn  from  the  pomp  of  war  to  breathe  hard  breath 
over  his  plough,  and  could  earn  the  means  of  intellectual 
successes  by  teaching  writing  in  remote  villages;  —  the 
death  of  a  man  who  could,  as  it  were,  be  good-humoured 
even  with  death, —  the  death  of  such  a  man  has  cemented 


GENERAL    GARFIELD. 


267 


the  union  of  nations,  and  by  a  touch  of  nature  has  made  the 
whole  world  kin.  Greater  in  death  —  a  death  "homely, 
humanj  august  in  unostentatious  heroism  "- —than  even  in  a 
stainless  life,  he  set  the  seal  to  a  grand  example;  and  we 
can  see  why  it  was  he  died, —  why  it  was  that  in  the  very 
prime  of  life  he  was  called  from  an  earthly  burden  to  a 
heavenly  crown.  Let  his  sad  end  —  the  long  agony  of  his 
martyrdom  —  save  you  from  drawing  only  from  his  life  the 
vulgar  lesson  of  the  means  of  earthly  success.  Earthly 
success  is,  at  the  best,  of  uncertain  attainment ;  many  a  man 
has  purposely  to  sacrifice  all  hope  or  prospect  of  it  to  higher 
ends.  Many  of  earth's  greatest,  wisest,  and  noblest  have 
never  enjoyed  it.  It  never  can  fall  to  more  than  the  very 
few;  and  to  most  of  those  few  it  has  brought  as.  little  real 
happiness  as  if  they,  too,  had  been  stricken  low,  as  he  was, 
the  moment  that  they  have  attained  it.  But  the  lesson  of 
his  life  is  at  once  easier  and  harder;  easier,  in  that  the  sole 
obstacle  to  its  attainment  lies  not  in  external  circumstances, 
but  in  our  own  hearts ;  harder,  because  so  few  men  are,  as 
he  was,  in  the  most  secret  sessions  of  their  thoughts,  true 
to  themselves,  true  to  their  God.  Young  men,  would  you 
learn  the  real  lesson  of  his  life?  It  lies  in  this, —  that 
you  can  all  be  honest  men;  and  "An  honest  man's  the 
noblest  work  of  God."  There  is  a  real  and  abiding- 
grandeur  in  the  steady  love  of  good  and  the  steady 
scorn  of  evil.  The  man  who  by  God's  grace  has  made 
himself  true  and  virtuous,  the  man  who  is  pure,  and 
brave,  and  kind,  and  watchful,  and  self-reliant,  and  dili- 
gent, and  thorough,  and  a  good  soldier  and  servant  of  Jesus 
Christ,  that  man  is  one  whom  God  and  man  alike  will,  in 
the  long  run,  delight  to  honour.  Aim  at  this,  and  you 
cannot  fail. 


268  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY, 

"  Take  thou  no  care  for  aught  but  truth  and  right, 
Content,  if  such  thy  fate,  to  die  obscure  : 
Wealth  palls  and  honours ;  fame  may  not  endure ; 

And  loftier  souls  soon  weary  of  delight. 

Keep  innocence,  be  all  a  true  man  ought ; 
Let  neither  pleasure  tempt  nor  pain  appal : 

Who  hath  this,  he  hath  all  things,  saving  naught : 
Who  hath  it  not  hath  nothing,  having  all." 


DEAN   STANLEY. 

"  Of  a  truth  I  perceive  that  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons :  but  in  every 
nation  he  that  feareth  Him,  and  worketh  righteousness,  is  acceptable  to  Him." — 
ACTS  x.  34,  35. 

I  HAVE  been  trying  in  the  last  sad  days  to  estimate  fur- 
ther some  of  the  life-work  of  that  dear  departed  friend, 
Dean  Stanley.  His  funeral  was  signalized  by  a  wonderful 
outburst  of  universal  affection,  such  as  has  been  rarely 
exhibited  for  any  man, —  never  perhaps  before  in  English 
history  for  any  clergyman.  Princes  and  Princesses;  the 
Prime  Minister  and  the  leaders  of  the  opposition;  our 
chief  men  of  science;  our  chief  poets;  our  most  eminent 
writers;  ambassadors  of  foreign  countries;  archbishops 
and  bishops;  clergymen  of  all  schools  of  thought;  working- 
men  of  every  shade  of  politics;  nonconformists,  French 
Protestants,  Americans,  Armenians,  Jews;  every  varied 
element  of  English  life  and  thought;  all  that  was  greatest 
and  best  in  English  society, —  thronged  the  Abbey  from  end 
to  end  to  do  honour  to  the  memory  of  one  man.  In  that 
procession  some  were  even  eager  to  walk  who  had  been  in 
his  lifetime  his  most  conspicuous  and  his  most  uncompro- 
mising opponents ;  for,  "  when  a  man's  ways  please  the  Lord, 
he  maketh  even  his  enemies  to  be  at  peace  with  him." 
There  was  no  break,  of  any  importance,  amid  the  voices  of 
affectionate  eulogy  and  immense  esteem.  Now,  since  such 
great  spontaneous  movements  of  national  feeling  have  in 
them  nothing  fictitious,  nothing  fortuitous,  it  must  be  good 


2/0  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

for  us  to  understand  their  significance.  Small,  indeed,  is 
the  ripple  which  any  one  of  us  makes  when  we  disappear 
beneath  the  rolling  waters.  We  look  again:  the  surface 
is  smooth  and  smiling, —  there  is  no  sign  that  any  one 
has  sunk  beneath  those  flowing  waves.  But  to  dismiss 
into  swift  oblivion  the  lessons  of  a  life  exceptionally 
noble,  exceptionally  beautiful,  is  to  neglect  God's  best 
gifts.  It  is  true  that  the  good  thoughts,  and  deeds, 
and  memories  of  those  who  have  been  the  salt  and  the 
light  of  the  earth  do  not  perish  with  them.  They  still 
live  on.  Whatever  there  has  been  of  grateful  considera- 
tion, of  kindly  hospitality,  of  far-reaching  generosity,  of 
gracious  charity,  of  high-minded  justice,  of  unselfish  sacri- 
fice, of  saintly  devotion, —  these  still  feed  the  streams  of 
moral  fertilization,  which  will  run  on  when  the  place  of  the 
dead  knows  them  no  more,  when  even  their  names  have 
perished;  but  we  should  strive  to  make  them  live  by  learn- 
ing their  lessons  of  goodness  and  wisdom.  Do  not  let  us 
say  that  we  have  not  the  necessary  gifts.  Each  of  us  has 
his  own  gifts;  and  we  might,  if  we  desired,  indefinitely 
improve  them.  God  giveth  the  Holy  Spirit  to  them  that 
seek  Him.  Let  no  religious  unreality  prevent  us  ,from 
speaking  of  good  men.  "Whatever  is  made  manifest," 
says  the  apostle  (for  so  the  verse  should  be  rendered),  "  is 
light."  What  we  see,  when  we  see  anything,  is  simply  the 
light  which  it  reflects.  On  the  sun's  orb  we  cannot  gaze 
for  its  blinding  splendour;  but,  when  we  gaze  on  the  rose 
of  sunset,  on  the  golden  mirror  of  the  sea,  or  on  the  silver 
planets,  or  on  the  moon  walking  in  her  brightness,  what  we 
see  is  nothing  but  the  beams  from  one  great  fountain. 
Even  so  we  cannot  gaze  on  the  infinitude  of  God;  but  we 
see  Him  in  Jesus,  the  effluence  of  His  glory  and  the  express 


DEAN  STANLEY. 


271 


image  of  His  person,  and  we  see  Him  in  all  those  His  chil- 
dren who,  walking  in  His  footsteps,  are  changed  into  the 
same  image  from  glory  to  glory. 

Since,  then,  we  cannot  hear  the  voice  of  our  dear 
departed  brother  again  evermore,  let  us  not  merely  say, 
with  vain  sigh, — 

"  O  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand, 
And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still ! " 

but  let  us  try  to  emphasize  some  of  the  lessons  which  his 
whole  life  has  taught  us.  The  man  is  gone:  we  shall  enjoy 
no  more  the  dignified  and  gentle  manners,  the  playful 
humour,  the  eagerness  for  knowledge,  the  delightful  con- 
versation, the  life  high-minded  without  haughtiness,  holy 
without  superstition.  But  we  may  gain  from  seeing  that 
the  blessing  of  his  life  was  that,  when  he  might  have  been 
irritated,  might  have  been  depressed  and  disappointed, 
great  thoughts  kept  him  calm.  Whatsoever  things  are  pure, 
and  awful,  and  true,  he  thought  on  those  things.  There 
was  in  him  nothing  of  that  pettiness,  which  shews  itself  at 
some  time  or  other  in  almost  all  of  us.  He  never  sided 
with  the  multitude.  He  never  howled  with  the  wolves. 
"Surely,"  said  Sir  John  Herschel,  "if  the  worst  of  men 
were  snatched  into  Paradise  for  only  half  an  hour,  he  would 
come  back  the  better  for  it."  But  it  was  the  chosen  habit 
of  our  dear  friend's  life  to  live  as  it  were  in  Paradise  by 
habituating  his  soul  to  all  things  that  are  lovely  and  hon- 
ourable, and  by  turning  persistently  away  from  all  that  is 
base  and  mean.  If  St.  Augustine,  after  reading  of  the 
martyrs,  exclaimed,  "Shall  we  not  follow  them?"  if  it  was 
the  benevolent  face  of  John  Wesley  which  inspired  the  zeal 
of  John  Howard;  if  Henry  Martin  was  drawn  to  India  by 


272  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  memory  of  David  Schwartz,  and  Heber  by  the  thought 
of  Martin,  and  Cotton  by  the  grave  of  Heber, —  shall  not 
we  try  to  become  a  little  the  better  for  this  beautiful  and 
godly  life? 

Can    we   not,    for    instance,   imitate   his    reverence   for 
Humanity?     Shakspere  says  that 

"Not  a  man,  for  being  simply  man, 
Hath  any  honour,  but  honour  for  those  honours 
That  are  without  him,  as  place,  riches,  favour, 
Prizes  of  accident  as  oft  as  merit." 

But  to  Arthur  Stanley,  as  to  all  the  best  and  truest  men, 
the  trappings  and  surroundings  of  life,  all  that  makes  the 
base  cringe  and  kotow  before  the  successful,  were  as  no- 
thing. He  always  reverenced  a  man  simply  as  a  man.  He 
ever  sought  to  find  in  every  man  the  angel,  and  not  the 
serpent;  the  Christ,  and  not  the  Adam;  the  good  and  not 
the  evil.  He  said  that  the  true  name  of  every  man  is  not 
Jacob,  but  Israel ;  not  the  mean  supplanter,  but  the  Prince 
with  God.  Even  in  the  characters  and  the  parties  which  he 
most  disliked  he  ever  sought  to  see  the  better  side.  It 
was  so  also  in  his  historic  judgments.  He  would  see  in 
Milton  the  immortal  poet,  not  the  bitter  controversialist; 
in  Bossuet  the  magnificent  Christian  orator,  not  the  jealous 
theologian;  in  Cromwell,  the  champion  of  freedom,  not  the 
butcher  of  Wexford;  in  St.  Carlo  Borromeo  the  saintly 
worker,  not  the  furious  persecutor.  He  carried  his  charity 
even  into  his  estimate  of  epochs.  In  judging  the  Middle 
Ages  he  turned  his  thoughts  to  their  devotion  and  their  love 
of  art,  not  to  their  ignorant  orthodoxy  and  horrible  atroc- 
ities; and  in  the  eighteenth  century,  to  its  good  sense  and 
truthfulness,  not  to  its  lethargy  and  corruption.  And  he 


DEAN  STANLEY. 


273 


did  all  this  because  he  felt  the  beauty,  the  grandeur,  the 
sacredness,  of  humanity.  Like  Howard  and  Wilberforce, 
like  Eliot  and  Channing,  he  was  ever  sustained  "by  the 
thought  that  in  the  widest  diversities  of  human  nature  and 
in  the  lowest  depth  of  human  degradation  there  was  still  in 
the  better  part  of  every  human  being  a  spark  of  the  divine 
Spirit."  And  this  was  why  he  was  so  much  beloved.  He 
was  loved  by  men  of  every  age,  for  such  was  the  simplicity 
of  his  nature  that  he  would  always  listen  to  the  sugges- 
tion of  even  the  youngest.  He  was  a  link  between  men  of 
the  most  opposite  ranks.  After  the  great  bereavement  of 
his  life,  it  was  the  Queen  of  England  who,  with  gentle 
sympathy,  led  him  back  by  the  hand  into  his  desolate 
home;  and  he  was  no  less  dear  to  the  poorest.  When  he 
was  at  a  little  fishing  village  in  Devon,  after  an  illness,  the 
young  clergyman  who  was  with  him  has  told  how  a  fisher- 
man, coming  out  of  his  cottage,  asked,  "  Is  that  Dean  Stan- 
ley?" and,  on  being  told  that  it  was,  ran  into  his  cottage, 
fetched  out  a  fine  turbot,  and  begged  him  to  accept  it. 
Must  there  not  have  been  some  charm  of  sweetness  and 
goodness  about  a  man  who  received  such  a  tribute  from  a 
humble  fisherman,  who  had  never  so  much  as  seen  him, 
in  a  village  so  far  away?  In  this  reverence  for  the  low  no 
less  than  for  the  lofty  he  resembled  his  wife,  of  whom  the 
Westminster  poor  still  remember  how,  when  some  sufferer 
wanted  immediate  attention,  she  drove  at  once,  in  her  court 
dress,  to  do  her  deed  of  mercy  in  the  miserable  house  in  the 
squalid  street.  How  many  of  us  are  there  who  are  equally 
dear  to  princes  and  paupers?  How  many  clergymen  are 
now  living  in  whose  memory  would  be  passed  by  clubs  of 
workingmen,  such  a  resolution  as  that  which  even  as  I  was 
writing  these  words  reached  my  hands, —  that,  "while  the 


274  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

loss  of  so  good  a  man  will  be  felt  in  all  grades  of  society, 
in  no  class  will  be  found  more  grief  and  sorrow  than  among 
Workingmen's  Clubs,  who  have  lost  in  their  President  a 
faithful  friend,  a  kind  and  sympathetic  instructor,  and  a 
noble  Christian  gentleman  "?  Ah!  the  day  may  come  when 
in  the  deepening  divisions  between  class  and  class, —  in  the 
growth  on  one  side  of  a  selfish  luxury  and  on  the  other  of 
a  fierce  and  socialistic  independence, —  the  day  may  come 
when  men  will  see  that  such  a  man,  more  than  hundreds 
of  commonplace  ecclesiastics,  or  scores  of  the  noisy  fugle- 
men of  parties,  was  a  tower  of  strength  to  our  common 
Christianity, —  to  all  that  is  most  precious  and  sacred  in 
our  English  life.  Even  those  who  did  their  little  best  to 
embitter  his  days  by  a  perpetual  depreciation  may  live  to 
see  in  him  one  of  the  few  righteous  who  delay  the  doom 
of  endangered  peoples. 

Nor  was  this  all.  His  reverence,  his  enthusiasm  for 
humanity,  made  him  a  link  not  only  between  different 
classes,  but  even  between  different  nations.  When  he  went 
to  marry  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh  in  St.  Petersburg  to  the 
daughter  of  the  late  Czar,  his  one  aim  was  to  unite  the 
feelings  of  England  and  of  Russia.  He  spoke  of  the  "chiv- 
alrous respect  with  which  they  have  tried  each  other's 
strength  beside  beleaguered  fortress  and  on  hard  won  bat- 
tlefield; of  their  having  listened  to  the  inspiring  accents  of 
each  other's  literature,  of  their  churches  having  exchanged 
many  a  friendly  message,  and  breathed  many  a  kindly  hope 
for  the  great  hereafter,  which,  if  each  be  true  to  itself, 
assuredly  awaits  them  both."  He  never  went  to  Scotland 
without  being  most  heartily  welcomed  by  every  branch  of 
the  Scotch  Church;  and  by  his  addresses  and  sermons 
there  he  did  not  a  little  to  ennoble  the  aims  of  the  rising 


DEAN  STANLEY. 


2/5 


generation.  But  what  shall  I  say  of  the  services  which  he 
rendered  to  the  growth  of  brotherly  love  between  England 
and  America?  It  is  not  eight  years  since  another  member 
of  our  cathedral  body,  the  lamented  Canon  Kingsley,  was 
received  across  the  Atlantic  with  kindest  welcome;  but  I 
doubt  whether  any  Englishman  ever  met  with  a  welcome  more 
effusive  in  its  glowing  and  spontaneous  feeling  than  that 
which  greeted  our  beloved  Dean,  as  he  travelled  over  that 
mighty  continent,  leaving  everywhere  the  memory  of  words 
full  of  nobleness  and  peace.  Such  words  spoken  by  such 
men  are  as  the  golden  couplets  which  hold  fast  the  strain- 
ing amity  of  peoples;  and  America  will  not  soon  forget  how, 
if  he  saw  in  the  confusion  and  chaos  of  Niagara  an  emblem 
of  the  restless,  beating  whirlpool  of  active  energy  in  the 
United  States,  he  saw  also  in  the  silver  column  of  spray  above 
the  cataract,  rising  twice  as  high  as  the  falls  themselves, — 
silent,  majestic,  immovable,  glittering  in  the  moonlight, — 
an  emblem  of  the  future  destiny  of  America,  and  of  the 
pillar  of  light  which  shall  emerge  to  guide  the  nation  from 
the  turmoil  of  her  present.  He  ever  welcomed  Americans 
here.  Again  and  again  have  their  great  preachers  ad- 
dressed us  from  the  pulpit  of  Westminster  Abbey.  And, 
when  he  noticed  on  the  beautiful  shores  of  Lake  George  a 
maple  and  an  oak  growing  from  the  same  stem,  he  saw  in  that 
twofold  yet  united  tree  an  emblem  of  our  unbroken  unity, — 
the  brilliant,  fiery  maple  an  emblem  of  America,  the  gnarled, 
twisted  oak  the  emblem  of  England;  and  he  breathed  the 
prayer  that  so  the  two  nations  might  always  rise  together, 
different  and  representing  so  distinct  a  future,  yet  each 
springing  from  the  same  ancestral  root,  each  bound  to- 
gether by  the  same  healthful  sap  and  vigorous  growth. 
Ah!  one  good  man  —  the  mere  silent  influence  of  one  good 


2^6  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

man  —  is  often  more  precious  to  nations,  in  diverting  the 
perils  of  conflict  and  nullifying  the  germs  of  hostility, 
than  "mightiest  fleets  of  iron  framed,"  or  millions  spent 
upon  all-shattering  guns. 

Then,  once  more,  his  catholicity,  his  breadth,  his  large- 
heartedness, —  in  one  word,  his  Christianity, —  manifested  in 
faith  and  love,  made  him  also  a  link  between  those  various 
sects  and  religious  parties,  which,  if  left  to  the  vulgar  vio- 
lence of  their  common  partisans,  would  soon  tear  each  other 
to  pieces,  and  turn  the  Church  of  God  into  a  chaos  of  jarring 
antagonisms.  In  America,  in  Scotland,  in  England,  Pres- 
byterians, Independents,  Baptists,  Methodists,  Episcopa- 
lians, all  honoured,  all  loved  him,  because  he  regarded  it  as 
the  best  work  of  his  life  to  find,  in  the  great  primary  truths 
of  Christianity,  the  remedy  for  intolerance,  and  the  princi- 
ples which  bind  all  Christians  into  one.  The  Beatitudes, 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Apos- 
tles' Creed,  the  Two  Great  Commandments, —  these  sup- 
plied him  with  the  broad  basis  of  charity  and  union;  and 
he  looked  with  a  mixture  of  dismay  and  scorn  on  vermicu- 
late  questions  of  system  and  petty  exaltations  of  non-essen- 
tials, which  do  but  sever  and  deracinate  the  peace  of  Chris- 
tians. Hence  in  sects,  parties,  churches,  as  in  individuals, 
he  looked  always  for  the  good,  not  for  the  evil.  To  him 
error  in  the  intellect  was  as  nothing  compared  with  ran- 
cour in  the  heart.  He  understood  the  word  "heresy  "  in  the 
New  Testament  sense,  in  which  it  means  not  divergent 
opinion,  but  that  party  factiousness  which  lies  crouched  like 
a  wild  beast  for  the  opportunity  to  rend  and  to  attack.  His 
wish  was  to  judge  all  men  and  all  institutions  at  their  best. 
In  the  Greek  Church  he  saw  the  calm  and  gravity,  in  the 
Roman  the  love  of  art  and  the  cultivation  of  saintliness, 


DEAN  STANLEY. 


277 


in  the  Calvinistic  the  stern  intensity  of  conviction,  in  the 
Lutheran  the  burning  love  of  truth.  His  perfect  cordiality 
to  nonconformists  arose  from  no  plasticity  or  indiffer- 
ence, for  few  men  loved  more  passionately  the  Established 
Church,  but  it  arose  from  his  habit  of  seeing  each  sect 
glorified  and  illumined  in  the  persons  of  its  worthiest  chil- 
dren. He  saw  the  Quakers  in  the  light  of  William  Penn 
and  Elizabeth  Fry;  the  Baptists  shone  in  the  lives  of  John 
Bunyan  and  Henry  Havelock;  the  Independents,  in  Isaac 
Watts;  the  High  Churchmen,  in  the  virtues  of  Andrews  and 
Keble;  the  Evangelicals,  in  the  philanthropy  of  Wilber- 
force  and  the  tender  muse  of  William  Cowper.  He  de- 
lighted in  that  painted  window,  the  gift  of  an  American  citi- 
zen, where  the  priestly  Herbert  and  the  Puritanical  Cowper 
shine  side  by  side.  He  delighted  in  the  monument  which 
shews  the  serious  and  noble  faces  of  Charles  and  John 
Wesley.  He  delighted  in  the  advice  of  Archbishop  Pot- 
ter, for  which  John  Wesley  always  blessed  God, —  not  to 
spend  strength  in  combating  about  the  disputable,  but  in 
opposing  open  vice  and  promoting  essential  holiness;  and 
he  delighted  in  the  hymn  of  Charles  Wesley, — 

"  Weary  of  all  this  wordy  strife, 

These  notions,  forms,  and  modes,  and  names, 

To  Thee,  the  way,  the  truth,  the  life, 
Whose  love  my  simple  heart  inflames, 

Divinely  taught,  at  last  I  fly, 

With  Thee  and  Thine  to  live  and  die." 

That  we  are  not  the  whole  Church,  but  a  part  of  it ;  that 
it  is  our  duty  to  help  and  supplement,  not  to  slander  and 
supersede  each  other;  that  the  aspects  of  truth  are  various, 
not  single;  "that  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  but,  in 
every  nation,  he  that  feareth  God  and  worketh  righteousness 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

is  accepted  of  him," — these  were  the  convictions  on  which 
rested  his  noble  charity.  He  loved  to  repeat  the  answer 
sent  to  the  Pope  by  the  Eastern  Patriarchs  in  one  of  their 
many  controversies, —  "  Let  us  love  one  another,  in  order  that 
we  may  be  able  with  one  accord  to  worship  God."  Like 
Archbishop  Leighton,  he  left  to  others  to  preach  up  the 
petty,  passing,  insolent  controversies  of  the  time,  while  he 
preached  up  the  blessed  and  certain  truths  of  eternity;  nor 
would  he,  for  the  sake  of  winning  the  paltry  victories  of 
to-day,  imperil  or  compromise  the  eternal  interests  of  to- 
morrow. He  would  have  said,  with  the  old  Scotch  Metho- 
dist, "I  have  heard  whisperings  of  the  still,  small  voice, 
telling  me  that  the  footfalls  of  faiths  and  their  wranglings 
will  ne'er  be  heard  in  the  Lord's  kingdom."  Like  the  grand 
old  patriarch  he  left  to  others  the  well  "  Esek  "  of  contro- 
versy, and  the  well  "Sitnah"  of  recrimination,  to  drink  in 
peace  of  the  well  "Rehoboth,"  the  well  of  breadth  or 
room:  "Lord,  it  is  done  as  Thou  hast  commanded;  and 
yet  there  is  room." 

Lastly,  and  in  few  words,  he  was  not  only  a  link 
between  different  classes,  and  nationalities,  and  sects,  and 
churches,  but  also,  to  a  larger  extent  than  men  will  at  once 
recognize,  between  the  clergy  and  the  best  culture  of  the 
laity.  Multitudes  who  have  but  small  respect  for  the 
clergy,  in  general,  yet  loved  and  venerated  him.  They 
knew  how  utterly  exempt  he  was  from  arrogance  or  bitter- 
ness. They  knew  how  fully  he  recognized  that  it  is  not 
the  clergy,  but  only  the  clergy  and  the  laity  together,  that 
constitute,  or  that  speak  the  true  voice  of,  the  Church. 
He  was  a  power  to  draw  to  Christ  even  those  powerful  but 
wavering  intellects  who  turn  with  contempt  from  ignorant 
assumptions,  and  illiterate  anathemas,  who  are  unspeakably 


DEAN  STANLEY. 


2/9 


repelled  by  stupid  prejudice  or  professional  fanaticism. 
Such  men  were  half  won  back  to  the  Church  when  they 
saw  a  man  of  wide  culture  and  of  keen  intellect,  at  the  same 
time  a  sincere  Christian  and  a  faithful  Churchman.  They 
looked  up  to  one  who  did  not  shew  them  a  Church  without 
Charity,  a  Calvary  without  Redemption,  and  a  Crucifixion 
without  Christ,  but  who  had  the  elementary  graces  of  which 
others  talked,  who  had  learned  rrfore  than  most  of  us  do 
that  new  commandment  uttered  not  on  Sinai,  but  in  Galilee, 
—  that  eleventh  commandment,  not  of  Moses,  but  of  Christ, 
— "Love  one  another."  If  ever  any  impression  is  to  be 
made  on  the  widening  scepticism  and  agnosticism  of  the 
day,  it  can  only  be  by  those  who  have  learned  that  what  God 
loves  is  mercy,  and  not  sacrifice;  that  where  the  Spirit  of 
the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty;  that  "Truth  is  always  green." 
Ah!  he  is  gone!  It  is  well  with  him!  He  might  have 
said  with  the  Spirit  of  Balder,  in  the  poem, — • 

"  I  am  long  since  weary  of  your  storm 
Of  conflict,  and  find,  Hermod,  in  your  life 
Something  too  much  of  war  and  broils  which  make 
Life  one  perpetual  fight." 

It  is  well  for  him;  but,  oh,  it  is  not  so  well  with  us! 
Among  all  these  echoes,  so  dismal  and  so  dreary,  where 
shall  we  once  more  hear  a  voice?  Among  all  this  noise 
and  narrowness,  who  shall  teach  us  again  that  Christianity 
is  as  a  sea,  majestic  enough  to  receive  into  its  capacious 
bosom  "the  lakes  of  far  antiquity,  and  the  rushing  torrents 
of  impetuous  action,  and  the  dissolving  foam  of  ethereal 
speculation"?  Amid  all  this  rancour  and  wrangling  and 
bitterness,  and  war  of  the  greater  and  lesser  greeds  upon  the 
waste  of  life,  who  shall  shew  us  again,  not  in  idle  talk,  but 


28O  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 


I 


in  living  action,  the  sweetness  of  charity,  the  large-hearted- 
/  ness  of  comprehension?  The  good  and  the  great  are  passing 
away  from  us.  The  mountains  melt  into  the  distance;  the 
cedars  fall.  We  are  being  gradually  left  among  the  this- 
tles and  the  molehills,  so  we  are  tempted  to  complain;  and 
perhaps  we  shall  have -to  sigh  often  enough:  — 

"Thou  shouldst  be,  living  at  this  hour! 

England  hath  need  of  thee.     She  is  a  fen 

Of  stagnant  waters.  Altar,  sword,  and  pen, 
Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower, 
Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  dower 

Of  inward  happiness.     We  are  selfish  men. 

Oh,  raise  us  up !     Return  to  us  again, 
And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  power." 

But,  even  while  we  thus  mourn,  a  voice  seems  to  come  to  us : 
"Do  not  despair!  Soldiers  of  the  good  cause, —  the  cause 
of  the  future;  foes  to  narrowness  and  to  intolerance;  friends 
of  progress,  and  of  humanity,  and  of  hope;  ye  who  believe 
in  the  eternal  love  of  God;  ye  who  reverence  the  infinite 
sacredness  of  man;  ye  who  see  God's  love  in  the  Cross  of 
Christ  and  man's  sacredness  in  His  Incarnation;  ye  who 
hail  the  divine  brotherhood  of  nations,  and  the  unity  of  the 
one  flock  amid  its  many  folds;  ye  who  know  that  in  cath- 
olicity, and  comprehensiveness,  and  charity,  and  open- 
mindedness,  and  the  unfeigned  love  of  man  for  man  lies 
the  sole  hope  of  the  Church  and  of  the  world, —  close  up 
your  thinned  ranks!  While,  like  Havelock,  you  are  ever 
trusting  in  God  and  doing  your  duty,  no  great  harm  can 
happen  to  you.  If  you  suffer,  you  suffer  in  a  noble  cause; 
and  when  the  signal  comes  in  turn  to  you, —  the  high  per- 
mission, which  you  shall  so  gladly  welcome, —  then,  how- 
ever poor  or  obscure  you  may  be,  fall  out  of  the  ranks, — 


DEAN  STANLEY.  28l 

for  it  is  permitted  you, —  bow  your  head,  bless  God,  and 
die.  For  you  may  be  certain  then  that,  whatever  man  may 
say  of  you,  for  you,  as.  for  a  true  soldier  of  your  captain, 
Christ,  even  if  all  the  trumpets  sound  not  upon  the  other 
side,  you  cannot  miss  the  infinitude  of  rapture,  drowning 
all  the  disappointment  of  earth's  injustice  in  the  diapason 
of  its  mighty  blissfulness,  which  shall  lie  in  the  few  words 
of  Christ's  approval, — -"Servant  of  God,  well  done!  " 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN. 

"Right  dear  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord  is  the  death  of  his  saints." — PSALM 
cxvi.  15. 

HISTORY  is  a  Book  of  God:  its  chapters  are  men's  lives. 
When  men  are  intellectually  greater  than  others,  we  learn 
from  their  utterances;  when  they  are  morally  better  than 
others,  we  learn  from  their  lives.  Most  of  us  pass  away, 
and  leave  no  footprint  on  the  sands  of  time.  Rather,  our 
lives  are  but  as  the  infinitesimal  "ripple  made  on  an 
immeasurable  ocean  by  the  touch  of  an  insect's  wing." 
But,  when 

"Great  men  have  been  among  us,  hands  that  penned 
And  tongues  that  uttered  wisdom." 

we  lose  some  of  God's  most  striking  lessons,  if  we  neglect 
to  learn  the  truths  and  the  examples  which  they  bequeath  to 
us  at  their  departure. 

The  last  few  years  have  been  marked  by  the  deaths  of  men 
who  have  done  great  work  in  the  Church  of  God.  Germany 
and  England  have  both  lost,  quite  recently,  those  who  have 
rendered  the  most  eminent  service.  In  Germany  we  have 
lost  Delitzsch,  the  veteran  of  Hebrew  knowledge  and  Bibli- 
cal exposition,  and  Dollinger,  the  learned  and  venerable 
founder  of  the  Old  Catholic  moyement.  In  England  we 
have  lost  Dr.  Hatch,  whose  researches  into  the  language  of 
the  New  Testament  and  the  origins  of  church  history 
promised  invaluable  results,  and  Canon  Liddon,  whose 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN.  283 

fine  English  style,  whose  powerful  eloquence,  whose  mag- 
netic fascination,  whose  severe  and  simple  character,  whose 
beautiful  and  blameless  life,  have  met  with  such  boundless 
appreciation  from  the  Church  which  he  adorned.  Of  Canon 
Liddon  much  was  deservedly  spoken  in  many  of  the  pulpits 
of  London.  But  let  us  turn  our  thoughts  to  some  of  those 
great  Christian  virtues  which  this  age  specially  needs,  and 
which  the  example  and  words  of  that  other  great  ecclesiastic 
who  died  so  recently,  John  Henry  Newman,  a  man  of  un- 
deniable greatness,  taken  from  us  at  the  ripe  age  of  eighty- 
eight,  have  taught. 

Let  me  say,  at  the  outset,  that  the  lesson  does  not  lie 
in  those  distinctive  opinions  which  separate  Christian  from 
Christian.  It  is  not,  in  any  sense  of  the  word,  as  a 
Romanist  that  I  hold  him  up  to  our  admiration.  Roman- 
ists hold,  as  we  hold,  the  great  bases  of  Christianity, —  the 
doctrines  of  the  Trinity,  of  the  Incarnation,  of  the  Atone- 
ment, of  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  the  life  ever- 
lasting. The  Church  of  Rome  holds  the  three  creeds,  and 
the  sacraments,  and  the  Holy  Scriptures.  She  has  over- 
laid these  elements  of  the  faith  with  human  additions  and 
perversions  so  false  and  so  evil  that  our  own  Reformed 
Church,  in  her  Articles,  does  not  hesitate  to  characterize 
them  as  "blasphemous  fables  and  dangerous  deceits." 
That  Cardinal  Newman  held  these  tenets  does  not  add  one 
iota  to  their  truth ;  for  men  as  great  as  he  or  greater,  and 
as  good  as  he  or  better,  have  as  decisively  and  as  passion- 
ately rejected  them.  In  point  of  fact,  his  own  views  varied 
fundamentally  from  time  to  time.  As  a  youth,  he  was  an 
Evangelical;  as  a  young  man,  a  Broad  Churchman;  in  the 
prime  of  life  he  was  an  Anglican;  after  middle  life  he 
became  a  Romanist.  At  the  age  of  thirty-three  he  was 


284  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

saying  that  the  Roman  Church  was   "invaded  by  an  evil 
genius,"  and  applying  to   its  doctrines  the  epithets  "anti- 
scriptural,  profane,   impious,  audacious,  without  authority, 
gross,  monstrous,  and  cruel."     At  the  age  of  forty-four  he 
had  joined  the  Church  which  he  had  denounced  as  Anti- 
christ, and  began  to  speak  of  Protestantism  as  "  the  dreari- 
est of  all  religions."     But  at  all  these  periods,   amid  all 
these  variations,  he  was  equally  a  Christian.     He  held  the 
great  essential,  fundamental  truths,  by  which  —  and  not  by 
the  points  respecting  which  we  differ  —  we  shall  (if  only  we 
live  up  to  them)  be  saved.     Men  pride  themselves  on  their 
petty  opinions,  but  apart  from  the  fundamental  truths  on 
which  all  Christians  heartily  agree,  our  religious  opinions 
(about  which  there  is  so  much  wrangling  and  dogmatism 
and  arrogant  exclusiveness)  are  often  entirely  valueless.     I 
heartily  agree  with  John  Wesley,  who  said:   "We  set  out 
on  two  principles,     (i)  None  go  to  heaven  without  holi- 
ness of  heart  and   life.     (2)  Whoever  follows    after  this, 
whatever  his  opinions,  is  my  brother."     "Men  may  die," 
he  said,    "without  any  opinions,  and  yet  be  carried  into 
Abraham's  bosom;  but  if  we  be  without  love,  what  will 
knowledge  avail?     I  will  not  quarrel  with  you  about  opin- 
ions.    Only  see  that  your  heart  be  right  toward  God.     I 
am  sick  of  opinions.     Give  me  good  and  substantial  relig- 
ion, a  humble,  gentle  love  of  God  and  man."    Thus  Wesley 
attacked  both  the  wickedness  and  the  bigotry  of  the  world. 
He   "attempted  a  reformation    not  of    opinions  (feathers, 
trifles,  not  worth  naming),  but  of  men's  tempers  and  lives  "  ; 
of  vice  in  every  kind;  of  everything  contrary  to  justice, 
mercy,  and  truth.     To  Newman's  special  Romanist  views, 
then,  I  attach  no  importance;  but  we  may  all  alike  —  old 
and  young,  rich  and  poor  —  learn  from  the  beauty  of  his 
life. 


CARDINAL   NEWMAN.  285 

His  chief  characteristic  was  singleness  of  heart  through- 
out life.      One  of  our  most  Christian  poets  wrote:  — 

"  My  heart  leaps  up  when  I  behold 

A  rainbow  in  the  sky ; 
So  it  is  now  that  I  am  old, 
So  it  was  when  I  was  a  boy ; 

So  let  me  die. 

And  I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 
Bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety." 

The  lines  exactly  express  the  life  of  John  Henry  Newman. 
Whether  an  Evangelical  or  a  High  Churchman  or  a  Roman- 
ist, Newman  always  aimed  at  holiness.  From  the  days 
when,  as  a  little  child,  he  used  to  play  in  Bloomsbury 
Square  with  another  little  child,  destined  to  a  very  differ- 
ent career, —  the  late  Lord  Beaconsfield, —  it  was  always  his 
cfesire  to  serve  God  with  his  body  and  his  spirit,  which  were 
God's.  His  aim  was,  above  all  things,  the  renewal  of  his 
soul  after  God's  image  in  righteousness  and  true  holiness. 
Oh,  it  is  a  great  and  pre-eminently  blessed  thing  when 
"the  grace  of  God  takes  early  hold  upon  any  soul,  and  rea- 
son and  religion  run  together  like  warp  and  woof  to  frame 
the  web  of  a  wise  and  exemplary  life."  In  too  many 
lives  there  is  a  dreadful  break,  a  grievous  discontinuity. 
Their  first  volume  has  too  often  been  a  jest  book,  and  their 
second  a  carnival,  before  the  third  becomes  a  remorse  and  a 
repentance.  The  adulterous  queen,  in  the  great  tragedy, 
says  to  her  son, — 

"O  Hamlet,  thou  hast  cleft  my  heart  in  twain"; 

and  he  replies  to  her, — 

"  Oh,  throw  away  the  worser  part  of  it, 
And  live  the  purer  with  the  other  half." 


286  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

But  how  much  happier  are  they  who  can  give,  as  Newman 
did,  a  single  heart  to  God!  Oh,  you  who  are  young,  if  you 
would  live  happy,  if  you  would  live  safe,  if  you  would  make 
of  life  not  the  miserable  thing  it  often  is,  but  the  glori- 
ous thing  God  meant  it  to  be,  do  not  spend  the  first 
half  in  making  the  second  half  difficult  and  miserable. 
Blessed  is  repentance:  more  blessed  is  innocence.  The 
path  of  repentance  is  thorny  and  uphillward:  it  has  to  be 
climbed  with  stern  toil,  on  hands  and  knees,  "with  bleed- 
ing feet  and  aching  brow."  The  path  of  innocence  is,  by 
comparison,  as  a  primrose  path,  on  the  green  grass,  under 
the  woodland  boughs.  It  is  of  the  path  of  innocence  alone 
that  it  can  be  said  "that  the  path  to  Heaven  lies  through 
Heaven,  and  all  the  way  to  Heaven  is  Heaven." 

"  By  cool  Siloam's  shady  rill,  t 

How  fair  the  lily  grows  ! 
How  sweet  the  breath,  beneath  the  hill, 
Of  Sharon's  dewy  rose. 

"  Lo  !  such  the  child,  whose  early  feet 

The  paths  of  peace  have  trod, 
Whose  secret  heart,  with  influence  sweet, 
Is  upward  drawn  to  God." 

Now,  what  was  the  secret  of  Newman's  single-hearted- 
ness? It  is  the  secret  which  too  many  of  us  miss.  His 
soul  was  athirst  for  God.  He  tells  us  how  he  rested  in  the 
thought  of  two,  and  two  only,  supreme  and  luminously 
self-evident  beings, —  himself  and  his  Creator.  Every- 
where he  saw  in  Nature  the  visible  manifestation  of  God's 
tenderness.  Everywhere  he  saw  the  presence  of  God's 
angels.  "Every  breath  of  air,"  he  said,  "and  ray  of  light 
and  heat,  every  beautiful  prospect,  is,  as  it  were,  the 
skirts  of  their  garments,  the  waving  of  the  robes  of  those 


CARDINAL    NEWMAN. 


287 


whos?  faces  see  God."  The  simplest  beauties  of  nature 
sufficed  him, —  even  the  daily  dreary  walk  from  Oxford  to 
Littlemore.  "The  heavens  changed,"  says  a  friend,  "  if  the 
earth  did  not  "  ;  and,  when  they. changed,  they  made  the  earth 
new.  His  eye  quickly  caught  any  sudden  glory  or  radiance 
above,  every  prismatic  hue  or  silver  lining,  every  rift, 
" every  patch  of  blue,  every  threat  of  ill,"  or  promise  of 
a  brighter  hour.  He  carried  his  scenery  with  him,  and 
did  not  crave  for  lakes  or  mountains.  Even  on  Salisbury 
Plain,  where  there  are  no  trees,  no  hedges,  no  water,  no 
flowers,  and  seldom  even  a  village  or  a  church  in  sight, 
he  would  walk  or  run  with  a  friend  as  cheerfully  as  the 
prophet  ran  from  Carmel  to  Jezreel,  to  announce  the  opened 
gates  of  heaven.  He  could  cry  with  the  Psalmist,  "As 
the  hert  panteth  after  the  water  brooks,  so  longeth  my  soul 
after  Thee,  O  God."  St.  Augustine  said,  "Thou  hast  made 
us  for  Thyself;  and  our  heart  is  restless  till  it  hath  found 
Thee."  It  was  this  realization  of  God,  this  dwelling  in  the 
Unseen  and  the  Eternal,  which  produced  all  the  distinctive 
characteristics  of  the  life  which  has  passed  away  amid  the 
admiration  even  of  the  world.  It  reminds  us  of  the  words 
of  the  Psalmist:  "He  that  dwelleth  under  the  defence  of 
the  Most  High  shall  abide  under  the  shadow  of  the  Al- 
mighty." 

It  produced,  for  instance,  his  entire  unworldliness. 
In  these  days,  when  men  worship  money  with  so  fierce  a 
devotion,  when  Mammon  is  so  great  a  god  among  them, 
when  "how  much  a  man  is  worth  "  means  how  much  money 
he  has,  Cardinal  Newman  lived  (which  is  so  rare)  in  self- 
chosen  poverty.  During  the  greater  part  of  his  life  he 
never  had  more,  and  often  not  so  much,  a  year  as  is  earned 
by  many  a  butler  or  skilled  artisan.  Friends  came  to  him 


288  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

unsought,  unhoped  for:  he  did  not  go  out  of  his  way  to 
seek  them.  Fame  came  to  him  almost  in  spite  of  himself. 
"He  had  no  ambition  to  make  a  career  or  to  rise  to  rank 
and  power.  Still  less  had  pleasure  any  seductions  for 
him."  His  senses  were  exceptionally  fine  and  delicate; 
but  he  despised  not  only  pleasure,  but  comfort.  At  the  age 
of  sixteen  he  had  fully  made  up  his  mind  that  God  called 
him  to  a  celibate  life;  and  to  give  up  that  which,  of  all 
other  things,  had  the  extremest  charm  for  him,  the  joys  of 
home.  He  substituted  for  them  the  joys  of  self-discipline. 
Even  when  he  was  a  Cardinal  of  Rome,  he  was  content  with 
a  single  bare  room  at  the  oratory  of  Edgebaston,  which  was 
both  sitting-room  and  bedroom,  with  only  a  little  square  of 
carpet  in  the  middle,  severely  simple.  He  had  the  rare 
desire  to  descend.  He  could  offer  the  prayer  which  in 
these  days,  as  Bunyan  says,  has  grown  quite  rusty,  as  it  is 
not  prayed  for  by  one  in  ten  thousand,  "Give  me  not 
riches."  When  he  was  quite  young  and  poor,  he  was  of- 
fered .£1,800  a  year  to  write  in  the  Times.  He  declined 
it.  He  would  not  have  been  free  to  say  what  he  thought. 
Neither  for  wealth  nor  for  power  would  he  deflect,  by  a 
hair's-breadth,  from  a  single  conviction.  He  was  one  of 
those  whom  the  poet  addresses 

"  Come  ye,  who  find  contentment's  very  core 
In  the  light  store 
And  daisied  path 
Of  Poverty,  and  know  how  more 
A  small  thing  that  the  righteous  hath 
Availeth  than  the  ungodly's  riches  great." 

And,  being  thus  whole-hearted  with  his  God,  Cardinal 
Newman  studied  the  spirit  of  detachment.  "To  be  de- 
tached," he  said,  "is  to  be  loosened  from  every  tie  which 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 


289 


binds  the  soul  to  the  earth;  to  be  dependent  on  nothing 
sublunary;  to  lean  on  nothing  temporal;  to  go  about  our 
own  work,  because  it  is  our  duty,  as  soldiers  go  to  battle 
without  a  care  for  the  consequences;  to  account  credit, 
honour,  name,  easy  circumstances,  comfort,  human  affec- 
tions, just  nothing  at  all,  when  any  religious  objection 
involves  the  sacrifice  of  them."  It  was  true  of  him  which 
he  says  of  Callista,  the  heroine  of  his  little  romance:  "She 
saw  that  there  was  a  higher  beauty  than  that  which  the 
order  and  harmony  of  the  natural  world  revealed,  and  a 
deeper  calm  and  peace  than  that  which  the  exercise  whether 
of  the  intellect  or  the  purest  human  affections  can  supply. 
She  drank  in  the  teaching,  which,  at  first,  seemed  so  para- 
doxical to  her,  that  even  present  happiness  and  present 
greatness  lie  in  relinquishing  what  at  first  sight  seems  to 
promise  them;  and  that  the  way  to  true  pleasure  is  not 
through  self-indulgence,  but  through  mortification." 

Now  this  detachment,  in  which  we  are  all  so  griev- 
ously deficient,  worked  in  three  ways.  First,  it  deepened  in 
him  the  sense  of  the  awfulness  of  sin  and  the  supreme 
value  of  the  human  soul.  I  know  no  passage  in  religious 
literature  more  terrible  than  that  in  which  he  describes  the 
agony  of  a  respectable,  well-to-do,  able  man,  who,  having 
only  deceived  himself  into  the  belief  that  he  is  religious 
and  tried  to  serve  two  masters,  wakes,  in  the  other  world, 
to  find  himself  in  the  horrible  grasp  of  a  foul  fiend,  whose 
touch  is  agony.  "  The  Church  would  rather  save  the  soul 
of  one  poor  whining  beggar  of  Naples,  or  one  poor  brigand 
of  Palermo,  than  cover  Italy  with  railsvays  from  one  end  to 
the  other."  "It  were  better,"  he  said,  "for  the  sun  and 
moon  to  drop  from  heaven,  for  earth  to  fall  to  pieces,  and 
for  millions  of  men  and  women  to  perish  in  the  extreme 


2QO  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

agonies  of  starvation  than  for  one  soul  to  commit  one 
single  venial  sin, —  to  tell  one  single  untruth  or  to  steal  one 
poor  farthing  without  excuse." 

Secondly,  this  whole-heartedness  with  God  produced 
contempt  for  public  opinion.  How  many  men's  lives  are 
base  and  poverty-stricken  because  they  care  more  what  their 
neighbours  say  of  them  than  what  God  thinks !  Yet  what 
is  public  opinion?  "It  is,"  he  said,  "what  the  whole  world 
opines,  and  no  one  in  particular."  It  is  "every  one  ap- 
pealing to  every  one  else "  for  an  opinion  for  which  he 
does  not  hold  himself  responsible.  "You  fear,"  he  said, 
"the  judgment  of  men  upon  you.  What  will  you  think  of 
it  on  your  death-bed?  The  hour  must  come,  sooner  or  later, 
when  your  soul  is  to  return  to  Him  who  gave  it.  What 
will  you  then  think  of  the  esteem  of  this  world?  Will  not 
all  below  seem  to  pass  away,  and  to  be  rolled  up  as  a  scroll, 
and  the  extended  regions  of  the  future  solemnly  set  them- 
selves before  you?  Then  how  vain  will  appear  the  ap- 
plause or  blame  of  creatures  such  as  we  are, —  all  sinners, 
and  blind  judges,  and  feeble  aids,  and  themselves  destined 
to  be  judged  for  their  deeds!  When,  therefore,  you  are 
tempted  to  dread  the  ridicule  of  men,  throw  your  mind  for- 
ward to  the  hour  of  death.  You  know  what  you  will  then 
think  of  it  if  you  are  then  able  to  think  at  all."  My 
friends,  the  rule  for  us  all,  if  we  would  live  worthy  and 
noble  lives,  and  lives  which  God  approves,  is  to  follow 
conscience,  and  obey  the  will  of  God.  Conscience  should 
be  to  us,  as  it  was  to  him,  "the  aboriginal  vicar  of  Christ, 
a  prophet  in  its  informations,  a  monarch  in  its  peremptori- 
ness,  a  priest  in  its  blessings  and  anathemas"  ;  and  our  one 
prayer  for  ourselves  should  be  the  prayer  which  he  desired 
for  himself,  "that  in  all  things  we  may  know  God's  will, 
and  at  all  times  be  ready  to  follow  it." 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 


291 


This  detachment  made  him  singularly  straightforward, 
honest,  forthright,  in  the  expression  of  his  opinions. 
He  hated  all  that  miserable  hedging,  half  and  half- 
ness,  facing  both  ways,  trying  to  serve  two  masters, 
scheming  in  a  mean  way  to  make  the  best  of  both  worlds, 
which  is  the  curse  of  all  sham  religion.  Insincere  utter- 
ances, which  mean  nothing,  which  can  be  interpreted  any 
way,  which  use  language  for  the  .concealment  of  thought, 
—  these  are  the  broad,  glossy  leaves  on  the  barren  tree  of 
Pharisaism.  Newman  hated  this  selling  of  the  soul  for 
self-interest,  and  he  spoke  of  it  with  the  utmost  scorn. 
"Mistiness,"  he  said  disdainfully,  "is  the  mother  of  wis- 
dom. A  man  who  can  set  down  half  a  dozen  general 
propositions  which  escape  from  destroying  one  another 
only  by  being  diluted  into  truisms;  who  can  hold  the 
balance  between  opposites  so  skilfully  as  to  do  without 
fulcrum  or  beam;  who  never  enunciates  a  truth  without 
guarding  himself  from  being  supposed  to  exclude  the 
contradictory  —  this  is  your  safe  man,  and  the  hope  of 
the  Church;  this  is  what  the  Church  is  said  to  want, — • 
sensible,  temperate,  sober  persons  to  guide  it  through  the 
channel  of  no  meaning,  between  the  Scylla  and  Charybdis 
of  Ay  and  No."  For  myself,  I  believe  that,  if  there 
were  only  a  little  more  of  honest  plain  speaking,  speaking 
distinctly  and  speaking  out,  half  the  lies  and  shams  which 
are  rotting  in  the  midst  of  our  religious  and  social  life 
would  be  dragged  out  of  their  deceitful  twilight,  and 
killed  by  the  pure  light  of  day. 

Cardinal  Newman,  then,  has  left  us  a  noble  example  in 
that  he  was  true  to  the  ideal  of  his  life.  One  of  his  rea- 
sons for  going  over  to  the  Church  of  Rome  was  because  he 
saw  too  much  in  the  English  Church  of  "a  comfortable 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

and  self-deceiving  worldliness."  He  yearned  "for  some- 
thing more  high  and  heroical  in  religion  than  this  age 
affecteth;"  for  something  which  was  nearer  "the  life, 
society,  and  principles  of  action  presented  in  the  New 
Testament  "  than  mere  phrases  and  outward  observances  and 
conventional  suppositions.  "He  could  not,"  it  has  been 
said,  "see  a  trace  in  English  society  of  that  simple  and 
severe  hold  upon  the  unseen  and  the  future  which  is  the 
colour  and  breath,  as  well  as  the  outward  form,  of  the  New 
Testament  life."  He  "craved  for  models  of  life  more  like 
the  life  of  the  early  Church";  and,  to  our  shame  be  it 
spoken,  he  found,  or  thought  that  he  found,  those  models 
more  real  in  the  Church  of  Rome,  which  he  joined,  than 
in  the  Church  of  England  which  he  left.  In  the  Roman 
Church  there  were  "strange,  unscriptural  doctrines,  and 
undeniable  crimes,  and  an  alliance,  whenever  it  could, 
with  the  world."  But,  at  the  least,  the  Roman  Church 
had  not  only  preserved,  but  maintained  at  full  strength, 
through  the  centuries  to  our  day  two  things  of  which  the 
New  Testament  was  full,  and  which  are  characteristic  of 
it, —  devotion  and  self-sacrifice.  And  these  had  for  him 
a  sacred  attractiveness,  more  magnetic  than  the  comfort, 
and  Mammon-worship,  and  self-seeking,  which  are  the 
magnets  of  the  world. 

Here,  then,  my  friends,  are  the  lessons  which  we  may 
learn  from  the  life  of  this  departed  saint  of  God:  first,  a 
single-hearted  religious  life,  "completely  all  of  a  piece, 
patiently  carved  out  of  one  pure  block  of  purpose  " ;  next, 
absolute  devotedness  to  God,  shewing  itself  in  complete 
unworldliness,  and  detachment  from  lower  interests;  and, 
as  a  part  and  a  consequence  of  these,  a  deep  sense  of  the 
awfulness  of  sin  as  the  abominable  thing  which  God  hates; 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 


293 


a  contempt  for  the  fear  of  man,  and  the  idle  breath  of  pub- 
lic opinion;  an  absolute  forthrightness  and  honesty  of 
speech,  and  resolute  faithfulness,  at  all  costs,  to  the  best 
that  he  knew,  to  the  highest  and  purest  plan  of  life  which 
his  heart  and  intellect  could  form.  If  we  can  attain  any 
of  these  principles,  and  shew  the  same  faithfulness  towards 
them,  our  poor  lives  will  become  indefinitely  nobler, 
worthier,  more  useful,  more  happy,  more  holy,  because 
more  like  the  life  of  Christ  Jesus,  who  lived  and  died 
for  us  men,  and  for  our  salvation,  leaving  us  an  example, 
that  we  should  follow  His  steps.  That  is  the  one  object 
of  all  Christianity,  to  make  us  like  our  Lord. 

Oh,  may  we  strive  ever,  more  and  more,  to  learn  from 
Christ,  and  from  the  saints  who  have  followed  Christ's 
example!  and  we  shall  find  rest  unto  our  souls.  This  was 
the  great  aim  of  Newman's  life,  and  thereby  he  attained 
the  happy  art  (to  quote  his  own  words) 

"  Which  they  have  learned  who  aim  in  everything 
To  choose  the  good  and  pass  the  evil  by. 
These,  as  they  pace  the  tangled  path  of  life, 
Cleanse  from  this  earth  its  earthly  dross  away, 
And  clothe  it  with  a  pure  supernal  light ! " 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 

"  He  spake  of  trees,  from  the  cedar-tree  that  is  in  Lebanon  even  unto  the 
hyssop  that  springeth  out  of  the  wall :  he  spake  also  of  beasts,  and  of  fowl,  and 
of  creeping  things,  and  of  fishes."  —  i  KINGS  iv.  33. 

OF  all  the  illustrious  tombs  which  crowd  Westminster 
Abbey,  none  is  more  illustrious  than  that  of  Isaac  Newton. 
His,  as  Dean  Stanley  said,  is  "the  only  dust  of  unques- 
tionably world-wide  fame  that  the  floor  of  Westminster 
covers."  Over  his  beautiful  statue,  Astronomy,  leaning 
on  her  celestial  globe,  has  for  a  time  closed  her  book.  On 
the  graceful  bas-relief  below,  his  works  are  allegorically 
forthshadowed.  The  genii  coining  at  the  furnace  symbol- 
ize his  services  as  Master  of  the  Mint;  another  genius 
holding  a  prism  indicates  his  vast  and  brilliant  discoveries 
respecting  the  laws  of  light;  another  weighs  the  sun 
against  the  planets  on  a  steelyard,  as  an  emblem  of  the 
laws  of  gravitation  which  he  established;  yet  another  lays 
on  his  telescope  an  admiring  hand;  at  the  left  others  tend 
an  aloe  whose  rare  blossom  is  the  emblem  of  immortality. 
And  the  inscription  tells  that  he  "of  nature,  of  antiquity, 
of  Holy  Scripture,  a  diligent,  able,  faithful  interpreter,  he 
vindicated  by  science  the  majesty  of  the  Almighty;  while 
in  his  character  he  shewed  forth  the  simplicity  of  the  gos- 
pel." Other  illustrious  votaries  of  art  and  science  have 
here  their  memorials,  or  have  mingled  their  dust  with  his; 
other  astronomers,  like  Herschel,  and  the  young  and  la- 
mented Horrocks,  who  on  a  laborious  Sunday  between  two 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


295 


services  observed  the  transit  of  Venus  which  he  had  pre- 
dicted; geologists,  like  Buckland  and  Lyell;  physicians, 
like  Mead  and  Hunter;  discoverers,  like  Morland  and  Davy 
and  Hales  and  Young;  engineers,  like  Watt  and  Stephen- 
son,  and  Telford  and  Brunei.  But,  in  all  the  long  list 
during  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  since  the  body  of 
Newton  was  borne  from  the  Jerusalem  chamber,  none  was 
nobler  or  greater,  none  exercised  an  influence  so  deep  upon 
the  progress  of  science,  none  had  more  unquestionably  a 
world-wide  fame,  than  that  great  and  good  man,  Charles 
Darwin.  With  one  voice,  the  gratitude  of  Europe  and  of 
England  pronounces  him  to  have  been  most  patient  in 
his  researches;  most  original  in  his  methods;  most  brill- 
iant in  his  combinations;  inspired  by  the  purest  love  of 
truth;  actuated  by  the  most  transparent  candour;  micro- 
scopically careful  in  observation  of  detail;  magnificently 
comprehensive  in  width  of  grasp;  "a  high  example  of  the 
fidelity  and  humility  of  human  thought."  Death  has  been 
busy  of  late  among  our  best  and  greatest.  It  has  taken 
from  us  the  great  statesman  whose  career — "extraordi- 
nary," as  his  successor  said,  "even  among  the  extraordi- 
nary"—  illustrated  the  force  of  genius  and  indomitable 
perseverance;  it  has  taken  the  fine  thinker,  who,  choos- 
ing romance  as  the  vehicle  of  her  teaching,  has  flung  so 
rich  a  light  on  many  of  the  problems  of  human  charac- 
ter; it  has  taken  the  great  moralist,  who,  in  language 
intense  and  vivid  as  lightning,  proclaimed  to  us  the  old 
gospel  of  heroism  and  labour;  it  has  taken  that  beautiful 
and  accomplished  spirit, —  so  dearly  loved  a  friend  to  many 
of  us,  who  has  left  in  our  hearts  and  in  this  place  a  memory 
which  cannot  be  dimmed,  but  a  blank  and  void  which  can 
never  be  filled  up.  A  few  years  ago  it  took  from  America 


296  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  good-hearted  and  eloquent  Emerson.  It  has  taken  this 
greatest  of  our  men  of  science;  this  keen  observer,  whose 
genius  enabled  us  to  read  so  many  hitherto  undeciphered 
lines  in  God's  great  epic  of  the  universe;  this  clear-eyed 
student  of  nature,  so  docile  and  so  patient,  so  childlike 
and  full  of  love. 

It  is  too  early  as  yet  to  estimate  his  place  among 
mankind;  but  even  now  we  may  say  that  his  claim  to  im- 
mortal honour  is  securely  based  on  the  methods  which  he 
discovered  and  the  facts  which  he  amassed  during  his  life- 
long toil.  Kepler  said  that  he  might  well  wait  a  few  years 
for  a  reader,  when  God  had  waited  six  thousand  years  for 
any  one  to  see  His  works.  The  glory  of  Charles  Darwin, 
of  which  no  change  of  view  respecting  his  theories  can  rob 
him,  is  that  he  passed  through  the  world  with  open  eyes. 
In  the  voyage  of  the  "  Beagle"  he  bore  without  a  murmur 
that  five  years'  martyrdom  of  continuous  sea-sickness  which 
permanently  ruined  his  health.  It  was  amazing  —  but  for 
his  most  tender,  and  never-ceasing  devotion,  it  would 
have  been  impossible  —  that  anything,  much  less  that  such 
noble  work,  should  have  been  the  outcome  of  such  shat- 
tered strength.  How  many  of  us  would  have  had  the 
faith  and  the  courage  to  redeem  to  such  high  services 
what  would  have  been  to  most  men,  and  with  some  ex- 
cuse, the  life  of  a  broken  valetudinarian?  But  it  was  in 
that  voyage  that  he  laid  the  foundations  of  his  vast  know- 
ledge. This  man  on  whom  for  years  bigotry  and  ignorance 
poured  out  their  scorn  has  been  called  a  materialist.  I 
do  not  see  in  all  his  writings  one  trace  of  materialism. 
I  read  in  every  line  the  healthy,  noble,  well-balanced 
wonder  of  a  spirit  profoundly  reverent,  kindled  into  deep- 
est admiration  for  the  works  of  God.  In  that  charm  ins 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


297 


record  of  his  circumnavigation  of  the  globe,  he  describes 
the  moonlight  in  the  clear  heavens;  the  dark,  glittering 
sea;  the  white  sails  filled  with  the  soft  air  of  gently  blow- 
ing trade  winds;  the  dead  calm  when  the  ocean  gleams 
like  a  polished  mirror;  the  rising  arch  and  sudden  fury 
of  the  squall,  in  which  the  albatross  and  petrel  sport, 
"the  dark  shadows,  the  bright  lights,  the  rushing  of  the 
torrents,  which  proclaim  the  strife  of  the  unloosed  ele- 
ments on  shore."  He  speaks  of  the  sublimity  of  the  tropi- 
cal forests,  undefaced  by  the  hand  of  man,  whether  those  of 
Brazil,  where  the  powers  of  life  are  predominant,  or  those 
of  Tierra  del  Fuego,  where  death  and  decay  prevail;  and 
"both,"  he  says,  "are  temples  filled  with  the  varied  pro- 
ductions of  the  God  of  Nature,  and  no  man  can  stand  in 
those  solitudes  without  feeling  that  there  is  more  in  man 
than  the  mere  breath  of  his  body."  And,  then,  from  these 
grandeurs  —  from  oceans  and  forests,  from  the  flora  and 
fauna,  from  electric  phenomena  and  the  motions  of  clouds 
—  he  turned,  with  the  open  eyes  of  equal  wonder,  to  things 
which  vulgar  minds  would  despise  as  mean  and  insignifi- 
cant,—  not  only  to  beasts  and  cattle,  or  to  birds  and  butter- 
flies, but  to  slugs  and  cuttle-fish,  to  frogs  and  phosphores- 
cent insects,  to  barnacles  and  sea-acorns,  to  confervae  and 
infusoria, —  conscious  always  that  more  creatures  wait  on 
man  than  he'll  take  notice  of.  In  1842  and  1844  he  first 
explained  to  the  world  the  structure  of  coral  reefs  and 
volcanic  islands,  which  play  so  important  a  part  in  the  con- 
figuration of  the  globe.  In  1859  came  his  "Origin  of 
Species";  in  1871,  his  "Descent  of  Man."  Those  books, 
apart  altogether  from  their  main  hypothesis,  abound  in 
exquisite  discoveries  and  splendid  generalizations.  The 
doctrine  of  heredity,  as  there  developed,  is  pregnant  with 


2g8  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

moral  warning.  The  chapter  on  the  struggle  for  existence 
reads  like  a  thrilling  tragedy,  which  must  have  its  signifi- 
cance ages  hence.  The  doctrine  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  may  be  so  used  as  to  act  like  a  moral  lever  for 
the  elevation  of  all  mankind.  And  these  great  colliga- 
tions of  facts  are  illustrated  by  hundreds  of  beautiful 
observations  on  the  instinct  of  animals,  the  plumage  of 
birds,  the  glowing  eyes  in  the  tail  of  the  peacock,  the  gar- 
dens of  the  bower-bird,  the  blue  bars  of  the  wings  of  the 
wood  pigeon,  the  nests  of  fishes,  the  colours  of  snakes,  the 
habits  of  ants,  the  cells  of  bees, 

"  Something  of  the  frame,  the  rock, 
The  star,  the  bird,  the  fish,  the  shell,  the  flower, 
Electric,  chemic  laws." 

There  is  scarcely  a  region  of  animate  or  inanimate  nature 
on  which  his  genius  has  not  poured  a  flood  of  light. 
Through  the  whole  system  of  thought  and  education  —  from 
the  oldest  university  of  Europe  down  to  the  humblest  vil- 
lage school  in  England,  his  inspiring  impulse  has  been 
felt.  The  allegorical  bas-relief  on  his  tomb  would  have 
to  be  crowded  with  the  works  of  God.  But  no  man  had 
ever  less  need  than  he  of  "storied  urn,  or  animated  bust." 

'AvS/auiv  CTTt^avwv  Tracra  yfj  ra<£os, "Of      illustrious      men,      the 

whole  earth  is  the  tomb " ;  and  of  Charles  Darwin  it  has 
been  finely  said  that  "a  grass  plot,  a  plant  in  bloom,  a 
human  gesture,  the  entire  circuit  of  the  doings  and  tenden- 
cies of  nature,  builds  his  monument  and  records  his  ex- 
ploits." 

For,  indeed,  he  threw  no  less  light  on  the  vegetable 
than  on  the  animal  world.  In  1862,  and  later  years,  he 
published  his  astonishing  investigations  into  the  fertiliza- 


CHARLES  DARWIN, 


299 


tion  of  orchids,  and  the  movements  of  climbing  plants,  and 
other  branches  of  botany.  In  these  works,  again,  he  made 
us  acquainted  with  masses  of  facts  which  none  had  under- 
stood during  the  six  thousand  —  or,  for  all  we  know,  the 
six  hundred  thousand  years  —  since  God  had  made  them. 
How  unspeakably  full  of  interest  is  the  discovery  of  the 
close  and  necessary  interrelation  between  the  insect  and 
the  plant!  When  a  pistachio  tree  in  Paris,  with  only 
female  flowers,  suddenly  bore  nuts,  and  it  was  found,  by 
most  careful  search,  that  there  was  but  a  single  tree 
with  male  flowers,  miles  away,  which  had  blossomed 
for  the  first  time  that  year,  it  might  well  have  been 
deemed  miraculous  that  the  wind  should  have  borne 
minute  and  almost  invisible  pollen  dust  across  miles  of 
smoky  faubourgs  till,  out  in  the  millions  of  motes  they 
swept  along,  it  alighted  by  chance,  yet  with  infinite 
nicety,  on  one  tiny  spot  of  the  pistils  of  that  distant  tree. 
It  was  the  German  botanist  Conrad  Sprenger  who  proved 
that  it  is  mainly  insects  which  fertilize  the  flowers  of  the 
world;  and  this  he  proved  by  watching  plants  from  sunrise 
to  sunset,  sometimes  for  sixteen  hours  together  in  silence, 
sometimes  till  he  saw  some  buzzing  insect  penetrate  the 
flower  for  its  honey,  and  then  observed  the  grains  of  pollen 
left  by  the  winged,  unconscious  messenger  of  God  on  the 
viscid  humour  of  the  stigma.  Mr.  Darwin  immensely 
developed  this  exquisite  discovery.  He  revealed  many  a 
fresh  link  in  the  divine  chain  which,  with  myriads  of  links 
microscopic  but  indissoluble,  connects  the  animal  with  the 
vegetable  world.  There  is  one  class  of  orchids  with  a 
grand-looking  nectary  which  were  believed  to  produce  no 
honey,  but  only  by  their  brilliant  colours  and  fair  promise 
to  deceive  the  bees  and  moths  into  visiting  and  so  fertiliz- 


3QO  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

ing  them.  They  are  called  sham  honey  producers.  Mr. 
Darwin's  innate  love  of  truth  and  hatred  of  shams  made 
him  disbelieve  this.  He  could  not  believe,  he  said,  in  so 
gigantic  an  imposture.  Man,  the  guiltiest  as  the  fore- 
most work  of  his  Creator,  may  wear  the  mark  of  the  hypo- 
crite; but  he  would  not  think  so  meanly  of  the  innocent 
lilies  of  the  field.  And  soon  he  discovered  that  these 
orchids,  so  far  from  existing  by  an  organized  system  of 
deception,  do  produce  honey  underneath  the  outer  skin  of 
the  nectary,  which  can  be  easily  pierced  by  the  moth.  Nor 
was  this  a  superfluous  trouble  given  by  the  flower  to  the 
insect.  The  gum  on  the  disc  of  these  plants  requires  a  few 
seconds  longer  to  get  dry  than  that  of  others,  and  the  time 
spent  by  the  moth  in  getting  the  nectary  allows  the  gum, 
and  the  pollen  with  it,  to  dry  properly  on  its  proboscis; 
and  thus* it  can  fertilize  its  kindred  flowers.  And,  if  you 
ask,  Of  what  use  are  these  exquisite  discoveries?  I  answer, 
first,  that  it  must  be  a  mean  mind  which  cares  nothing  for 
these  divine  adaptations  of  the  Creator,  unless  they  can  be 
turned  into  bread;  and,  next,  that  such  discoveries  are  often 
indefinitely  important  even  to  the  physical  needs  of  man. 
When  white  clover  was  first  imported  to  New  Zealand,  the 
colonists  observed  with  amazement  that  it  produced  no 
seed.  Red  clover  grew  there:  why  should  not  white?  Be- 
cause, as  such  discoveries  led  men  to  observe,  red  clover  is 
fertilized  by  the  humble-bee,  the  weight  of  which  resting  on 
the  keel  of  the  flower  pushes  the  stamen  in  such  a  way  that 
the  pollen  reaches  the  stigma.  But  white  clover  is  fertil- 
ized by  hive  bees,  and,  when  hive  bees  were  introduced  into 
New  Zealand,  the  white  clover  also  bore  seed  and  grew. 
When  man  has  faith, —  when  he  bends  with  the  simplicity 
of  childlike  admiration  over  the  works  of  God, —  he  never 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


301 


knows  how  precious  may  be  the  secrets  which  Nature  may 
unclench  for  him  out  of  her  granite  hand. 

It  is  but  a  short  time  since  Mr.  Darwin  gave  us  his 
last  work,  on  "Earth-worms."  In  it  he  demonstrated  the 
marvellous  fact  that  to  these  most  despised  and  humble 
creatures  we  owe  nothing  less  than  the  formation  of  vegeta- 
ble mould  all  over  the  surface  of  the  earth;  nothing  less, 
that  is,  than  the  preparation  of  the  earth  for  the  life  of 
man.  That  book  was  the  practical  outcome  of  forty  years 
of  patient,  continuous,  unhasting,  unresting  observation. 
The  worm  has  long  been  a  synonym  for  everything  mean 
and  contemptible.  .  Was  there  no  lesson  for  us  in  the  fact, 
till  then  undiscovered, —  nay,  even  unconjectured, —  that  on 
the  work  of  these  humble  creatures  man,  proud  man,  is  in- 
definitely dependent?  Was  there  no  rebuke  to  arrogance 
in  the  fact  that  many  a  man  does  less  good  in  life*than  the 
worm,  which,  though  it  does  no  evil,  he  crushes  into  the 
sod?  Was  there  nothing  admirable  in  the  loving  study  of 
these  despised  creatures  of  God?  As  a  boy,  Mr.  Darwin 
had  been  under  the  influence  of  deeply  religious  impres- 
sions. There  is  evidence,  I  think,  that  he  never  lost  them. 
And  this,  at  least,  is  clear:  that  in  all  his  simple  and  noble 
life  he  was  influenced  by  the  profoundly  religious  convic- 
tion that  nothing  is  beneath  the  earnest  study  of  man 
which  has  been  worthy  of  the  mighty  handiwork  of  God. 

When  Pompey  forced  his  way  into  the  Holy  of  Holies 
in  Jerusalem,  he  found,  to  his  amazement,  that  all  the  idle 
stories  of  his  countrymen  about  the  worship  of  the  Jews  were 
lies;  and  that  they  did  not  worship,  as  Greeks  and  Romans 
had  said,  an  animal  or  an  ass.  But  he  also  found,  to  his 
amazement,  vacua  omnia, —  that  all  was  empty,  that  there 
was  nothing  there;  and  after  this  the  Romans  thought  that 


3O2  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Jehovah  was  some  mere  being  of  the  clouds.  Something 
like  this  has  happened  to  many  men  of  science.  They  have 
found,  perhaps,  that  God  is  not  the  God  presented  to  them 
by  false  types  of  orthodoxy, —  no  awful  idol  of  the  cavern  or 
of  the  school, —  but  that  the  God  whom  the  Gospels  really 
revealed  is  a  God  of  light  and  a  God  of  love.  But,  when 
they  have  pressed  their  way  into  the  arcana  of  Nature,  the 
shrine  has  seemed  to  them  to  be  empty:  they  have  seen 
nothing;  and  so,  like  Pompey,  they  have  failed  to  recog- 
nize the  Unseen  Presence  which  dwelleth  there.  But  God 
was  in  His  holy  temple,  though  the  heathen  soldier  saw 
Him  not.  And  though  the  probings  of  the  scalpel  cannot 
manifest  Him;  though  no  microscope  can  reveal  Him; 
though,  among  the  immensities,  the  telescope  finds  "no 
manner  of  likeness  or  similitude,"  yet  to  the  eye  of  faith, 
to  that  spiritual  faculty  by  which  alone  (as  all  Scripture 
tells  us)  He  can  be  spiritually  discerned, —  and  which,  like 
every  other  faculty,  can  be  atrophized  by  neglect, —  God  is 
in  nature;  He  is  everywhere.  Galileo  saw  Him  in  the  far- 
thest star;  Linnaeus  worshipped  Him  in  the  humblest 
flower;  the  spores  of  the  meanest  moss  reveal  Him,  and 
the  colours  of  the  tiniest  insect's  wing.  And  there  as- 
suredly, judging  by  his  own  expressions,  this  great  natural- 
ist found  Him.  What  were  his  views  about  those  Chris- 
tian doctrines  which  we  hold  to  be  most  dear  I  know  not; 
but  I  do  know  that  in  all  his  writings  I  cannot  find  that 
he  has  lent  himself  to  a  single  expression  hostile  to  relig- 
ion, to  a  single  sentence  irreconcilable  with  my  faith  in 
Christ.  There  is  a  worship  which  has  been  described  as 
"mostly  of  the  silent  sort,  at  the  altar  of  the  unknown  and 
the  unknowable."  To  us  who  worship  a  Father  in  heaven, 
and  a  Saviour  who  died  for  our  sins,  it  looks  chilly,  maimed, 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


303 


and  imperfect.  But,  if  there  be  good  men  to  whom  no 
other  has  become  possible,  I,  for  one,  believe  that  by  God 
who  is  the  judge,  not  we, —  by  God,  who  seeth  not  as  man 
seeth, —  by  God  in  Christ,  it  may  and  will  be  accepted  as 
a  sincere  and  as  a  holy  worship.  Yes!  to  the  God  who 
reveals  Himself  in  many  ways,  I  believe  that  even  prayers 
which  can  find  no  words,  which  are  but  the  dim  yearnings 
of  the  unsatisfied  spirit,  the  sighs  heaved  by  the  uncon- 
vinced, may  at  least  be  as  acceptable  as  was  of  old  "the 
right  burning  of  the  two  kidneys  with  the  fat."  Nay,  if 
such  worship  be  offered  on  the  altar  of  a  pure  life,  if  it  be 
accompanied  with  faithful  effort  and  unselfish  loye,  I,  for 
one,  believe  that  it  will  be  a  far  sweeter  incense  than  the 
prayer  of  any  who  draw  nigh  unto  God  with  their  lips, 
while  their  hearts  are  far  from  Him.  Many  an  earnest 
believer  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  bent  with  sorrowing 
heart  over  Darwin's  grave.  Let  not  our  honour  for  him 
be  misunderstood.  *  It  does  not  mean  that  we  love  our 
Saviour  less :  it  does  mean  that  we  love  more  all  for  whom 
He  died.  It  does"  not  mean  that  we  have  a  fainter  faith : 
it  does  mean  that  we  have  a  larger  charity. 

When  the  greatest  living  master  of  science  in  France  — 
Louis  Pasteur  —  was  received  into  the  French  Academy, 
although  himself  an  earnest  and  a  sincere  believer,  he  had 
to  pronounce  the  tloge  on  his  predecessor,  the  learned  Posi- 
tivist,  Emile  Littre;  and  the  earnest  scientific  believer  spoke 
of  the  Positivist  in  these  noble  words:  "Littre,"  he  said, 
"had  his  God  within  him.  The  ideal  which  filled  his  soul 
was  a  passion  for  work,  a  passion  for  humanity.  He  has 
often  appeared  to  me  seated  by  his  wife,  as  in  a  picture 
of  the  early  time  of  Christianity,  he  looking  down  full 
of  sympathy  for  sufferers,  she  a  fervent  Catholic,  with 


•504  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

her  eyes  upraised  to  heaven;  he  inspired  by  every 
terrestrial  virtue,  she  by  every  divine  influence;  the  two 
wearing  but  one  radiance,  from  the  two  sanctities  which 
form  the  halo  of  the  God-Man, — that  which  proceeds  from 
devotion  to  what  is  human  and  that  which  emanates  from 
ardent  love  to  the  divine."  I  adopt  to-day  those  noble 
words  of  the  scientific  Christian.  God  is  larger  than  the 
Churches.  His  heart  is  wider  than  the  heart  of  theolo- 
gians. Faith  lives:  it  is  only  the  spirit  of  the  Inquisition 
which  is  dead. 

I  have  referred  to  some  of  the  regions  in  which  lay  the 
great  contributions  to  the  results  and  methods  of  science  of 
this  most  eminent  thinker  and  naturalist.  And  behind  the 
discoverer  stood  the  man.  If  in  his  works  he  has  left  us 
a  legacy  of  imperishable  knowledge,  in  his  life  he  has  left 
us  an  example  of  imperishable  attractiveness.  Before  the 
simple  goodness  of  this  man  the  arrogant  dogmatism  of 
science  no  less  than  the  arrogant  dogmatism  of  theology 
stands  rebuked.  Not  one  man  in  a  hundred  is  capable  of 
judging  about  his  theories;  but  all  the  world  can  judge  of 
the  beauty,  the  dignity,  of  his  character.  Denounced  as 
the  author  of  a  theory  subversive  not  only  of  religion,  but 
of  morality,  he  never  retaliated.  He  suffered  fools  gladly. 

To  scientists  he  left  the  high  example  of  one  who  did 
his  Heaven-appointed  work,  yet  never  lent  himself  to  one 
word  against  religion;  to  theologians,  the  rebuking  specta- 
cle of  a  mind  too  pure  and  too  lofty  to  be  moved  by  the 
explosions  of  ignorant  anathema.  The  personal  goodness 
which  beamed  from  him,  the  largeness  of  nature  in  which 
nothing  petty  could  live,  the  total  absence  of  mean  jeal- 
ousies, the  scrupulous  anxiety  to  do  justice  to  opponents, 
—  in  how  many  professing  Christians  even  shall  we  find 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


305 


these?  If  high  purity  and  rigid  performance  of  duty  con- 
stitute a  blessed  career;  if  what  God  requires  of  us  is  to  do 
justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  our 
God ;  if  to  "  do  unto  men  whatsoever  we  would  that  they 
should  do  unto  us"  be  "the  law  and  the  prophets,"-  — then  I 
do  not  hesitate  to  say  that,  rather  than  by  the  side  of  any 
formalist  or  any  Pharisee,  whose  daily  words  belie  his 
vaunted  orthodoxy,  and  make  men  turn  with  scorn  from  his 
religion  of  denunciation  and  of  hate,  I,  for  one,  would  rather 
take  my  stand  at  the  Great  Assize  with  one  who 'may  have 
borne  the  stigma  of  a  heretic,  but  who  shewed  the  virtues 
of  a  saint.  Calm  in  the  consciousness  of  integrity;  happy 
in  sweetness  of  home  life;  prof oundly  modest ;  utterly  un- 
selfish; exquisitely  genial;  manifesting,  as  his  friend  has 
said  of  him,  "an  intense  and  passionate  honesty,  by  which 
all  his  thoughts  and  actions  were  irradiated  as  by  a  central 
fire,"  —  Charles  Darwin  will  take  his  place  side  by  side 
with  Ray  and  Linnaeus,  with  Newton  and  Pascal,  with 
Herschel  and  Faraday,  among  those  who  have  not  only 
served  humanity  by  their  genius,  but  have  also  brightened 
its  ideal  by  holy  lives. 

There  are  two  phenomena  with  which  every  age  has 
been  familiar,  not  least  our  own.  One  is  the  rapidity  with 
which  truth  wins  its  way,  so  that  the  heresy  of  yesterday 
becomes  the  superstition^  of  to-day;  and  the  outcry,  "It 
is  wicked  and  false,"  is  succeeded  by  the  self-complacent 
murmur,  "We  thought  so  all  along."  The  other  is  the  way 
in  which  men  who  have  murdered  the  prophet  crowd  zeal- 
ously forward  to  build  his  tomb,  and,  having  embittered 
all  his  life  down  to  its  last  dregs  by  their  depreciations, 
come  and  shed  their  crocodile  tears  above  his  grave.  This 
life  is  a  fresh  illustration  of  these  phenomena.  Twenty 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

years  ago  the  views  of  Mr.  Darwin  were  received  with 
bursts  of  denunciation  and  derision.  What  are  the  facts? 
Those  who  still  think  them  unproven,  if  they  be  incompe- 
tent to  give  an  opinion,  have  at  least  learned  modesty. 
The  martyrdoms  of  science,  the  crimes  of  Inquisitors, 
ought  at  least  to  have  untaught  us  the  folly  of  condemning 
scientific  conclusions  on  the  ground  of  confused  abstract 
notions,  ignorantly  pieced  together  out  of  misinterpreted 
texts.  We  go  to  the  Bible  for  religion,  not  for  science; 
and  three  hundred  years  ago  Bacon,  one  of  the  greatest  and 
one  of  the  most  religious  of  philosophers,  warned  us  that 
he  who  is  guilty  of  the  empty  levity  of  trying  to  found 
natural  philosophy  on  the  Book  of  Job  or  the  first  chapter 
of  Genesis  is  looking  for  dead  things  among  living  men. 
Whether  we  accept  or  not  the  Darwinian  hypothesis,  this  at 
least  is  certain  that  (to  quote  his  own  words)  there  is  no- 
thing in  it  which  is  contrary  to  the  laws  impressed  on  mat- 
ter by  the  Creator.  Nay,  more:  that  "there  is  grandeur 
in  this  view  of  life,  with  its  several  powers,  having  been 
originally  breathed  by  the  Creator  into  a  few  forms  or  into 
one;  and  that,  while  this  planet  has  gone  cycling  on  ac- 
cording to  the  fixed  law  of  gravity,  from  so  simple  a  be- 
ginning,"— yes,  and  even  from  the  war  of  nature,  from  fam- 
ine, and  from  death, —  "endless  forms  most  beautiful  and 
most  wonderful  have  been  and  are  being  evolved."  It  may 
be  abhorrent  to  man's  vanity  to  be  told  that  he  is  sprung 
from  a  lowly  origin;  but,  on  the  one  hand,  it  ought  to  be 
more  abhorrent  to  know  that  man  has  often  indulged  in 
lower  vices  than  the  brute,  and,  on  the  other,  the  body  of 
his  humiliation  is  glorified  when  he  remembers  that  it  is 
God's  grace  which  has  given  him  "sympathy,  which  feels 
for  the  most  debased;  benevolence,  which  extends  to  the 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


307 


humblest  living  creature;  a  godlike  intellect,  which  has 
penetrated  the  heavens  and  weighed  the  stars."  So  far 
from  being  robbed  of  one  element  of  faith,  if  this  convic- 
tion be  ever  forced  upon  us,  we  may  be  indefinitely  the 
better  for  it  if  we  will  carry  with  it  the  old  and  sacred 

lesson, 

"  Unless  above  himself  he  can 
Erect  himself,  how  poor  a  thing  is  man !  " 

Let  me  point  to  one  or  two  great  and  most  needful 
lessons  which  this  life  may  emphasize  to  the  nation  and 
to  the  age. 

First,  I  hope  that  even  the  most  unteachable  of  mankind, 
those  whose  misguided  zeal  has  forced  science  and  religion 
into  unholy  antagonism  and  disgraced  the  flag  of  faith  by 
trying  to  raise  it  in  defiance  to  the  flag  of  reason,  will  see 
by  one  more  instance  that  by  such  conduct  they  wrong 
the  cause  of  religion  and  wrong  the  majesty  of  God.  Let 
us  have  done  forever  with  the  ruinous  error,  caused  partly 
by  want  of  real  faith,  partly  by  a  usurping  selfishness, 
which  has  led  the  Church  to  regard  progress  as  a  danger, 
and  to  repress  by  force  or  by  anathema  the  emancipating 
progress  of  the  human  mind.  The  names  of  Roger  Bacon, 
of  Columbus,  of  Copernicus,  of  Vesalius,  of  Campanella,  of 
Galileo,  of  Kepler,  of  Descartes,  rise  in  judgment,  not 
(God  forbid! )  against  religion,  but  against  an  ecclesiasti- 
cism  at  once  childishly  timid  and  fiercely  cruel,  which  con- 
stantly attempts  to  usurp  its  name.  Even  Newton's  law 
of  gravitation,  the  greatest  discovery  ever  made  by  man, 
was  attacked  as  being  "subversive  of  natural,  and,  inferen- 
tially,  of  revealed  religion."  Shall  we  never  learn  that, 
in  generation  after  generation,  divines  of  every  school  and 
of  every  shade  of  opinion  have,  in  matters  of  science,  been 


308  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

not  only  egregiously,  but  obstructively,  and  even  aggress- 
ively, in  the  wrong?  Science  is  not  their  sphere:  their 
opinion  about  it  is  not  worth  the  breath  with  which  it  is 
uttered.  But  in  this  matter  there  have  been  mistakes  on 
both  sides.  If  clergymen  have  arrogated  the  name  of  relig- 
ion to  baseless  nescience,  born  of  false  dogma  and  mis- 
taken system,  physicists  also  have  often  arrogated  the  name 
of  science  to  premature  conclusions,  based  on  insufficient 
facts.  Both  have  reared  on  bases  of  sand  and  on  pillars  of 
smoke  their  pretentious  temples  of  their  subjective  idols. 
Let  there  be  on  both  sides  a  little  patience,  a  little  humil- 
ity, a  little  brotherly  love.  A  truce  to  idle  antagonism! 
The  fundamental  doctrines  of  religion  are  eternally  true: 
the  fundamental  doctrines  of  science  are  eternally  true. 
In  ceding  to  science  the  study  of  the  universe,  we  do  not 
cede  one  iota  of  our  faith.  Religion  is  the  voice  of  God 
to  man  in  history,  in  conscience,  in  experience,  in  the 
gospel  of  Christ.  Science  is  the  voice  of  God  to  man  in 
nature.  Scripture  is  His  Bible  written  with  paper  and 
ink:  science  is  His  Bible  written  on  the  starry  leaves  of 
Heaven  and  the  rocky  tablets  of  the  world.  God  cannot 
speak  in  two  voices.  God  cannot  contradict  Himself.  Be- 
tween physicists  and  theologians  there  have  been  conflicts 
many  a  time.  Between  true  science  and  true  religion 
there  never  has  been,  never  will  be,  never  can  be,  any 
conflict  whatever.  The  one,  as  Baronius  so  truly  said, 
is  "the  revelation  of  how  the  heaven  goeth,  the  other  of 
how  we  must  go  to  heaven." 

And  because  these  false  antagonisms  have  been  infi- 
nitely dangerous  to  faith  over  Darwin's  grave,  let  us  once 
more  assure  the  students  of  science  that  for  us  the  spirit 
of  mediaeval  ecclesiasticism  is  dead.  We  desire  the  light. 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


309 


We  believe  in  the  light.  We  press  forward  into  the  light. 
If  need  be,  let  us  even  perish  in  the  light.  But  we  know 
that  in  the  light  we  shall  never  perish.  For  to  us  God  is 
light;  and  Christ  is,  and  will  be  to  the  end,  "the  Light 
of  the  World."  Ah!  if  we  had  but  presented  Him  to 
you  more  truly;  had  we  not  too  often  shewn  you  in 
ourselves  an  image  so  awfully  unlike  Him;  if  priests  had 
cared  less  to  clothe  themselves  with  power  and  more  to 
clothe  themselves  with  righteousness;  had  we  fought  less 
for  dead  scholastic  formulae  and  more  for  practical  living 
faith, —  it  may  be  that  between  the  students  of  science 
and  the  champions  of  religion  no  severance  would  ever 
have  occurred.  Had  we  cared  little  for  phrases  and  much 
for  fruit,  little  for  the  minutiae  of  ritual  and  dogma, 
much  for  mercy,  justice,  and  truth;  had  we  been  more 
jealous  of  that  falling  asunder  of  action  from  knowledge 
which  characterizes  too  much  of  our  so-called  religious 
life, —  men  could  never  have  been  alienated  from  a  faith 
which  shone  forth  in  the  beauty  of  holiness.  Let  us  try  to 
arrive  at  a  better  understanding,  at  a  deeper  sympathy.  We 
are  men, —  sharers  in  the  common  sorrows  of  few  and  evil 
days.  We  are  brethren :  we  need  each  other's  help;  we  need 
more  than  all  that  by  means  of  that  common  help,  God,  for 
the  alleviating  of  our  miseries,  should  constantly  give  us 
new  refreshments  out  of  the  fountains  of  His  goodness.  We 
recognize  with  deep  gratitude  the  boons  which  we  have 
received  from  science.  Ah!  let  none  of  you  fall  into  the 
dangerous  error  of  scorning  those  which  you  may  receive 
from  religion.  Is  it  nothing  that  we  can  point  you  to  a  sea 
of  light,  which  rolls  round,  and  overfloods,  this  sea  of 
darkness?  Have  you  no  need  of  Him  of  whom  we  tell 
you;  of  Him  who  alone  can  say  to  the  polluted  heart,  "I 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

will,  be  thou  clean";  to  the  prostrate  soul,  "Arise  and 
walk";  to  the  weary  spirit,  "Come  unto  me,  and  I  will 
give  you  rest "  ?  We  are  brethren,  created  by  the  same 
God,  redeemed  by  the  same  Saviour,  heirs  together  of  the 
common  mysteries  of  life  and  death.  Join  with  us,  over 
Darwin's  grave,  in  the  prayer  that  we,  by  the  grace  of  God, 
may  learn  more  of  humility,  of  charity,  of  large-hearted 
goodness,  of  religion  pure  and  undefiled;  and,  for  your- 
selves, that  "human  things  may  not  prejudice  such  as  are 
divine;  neither  that,  from  the  unlocking  of  the  gates  of 
sense,  and  the  kindling  of  a  greater  natural  light,  anything 
of  incredulity  or  intellectual  night  may  arise  in  your  minds 
towards  divine  mysteries;  but  rather  that  by  minds  thor- 
oughly cleansed  and  purged  from  fancy  and  vanities,  and  yet 
subject  and  perfectly  given  up  to  the  divine  oracles,  there 
may  be  given,"  not  only  unto  reason  such  things  as  be 
reason's,  but  also  "unto  faith  such  things  as  be  faith's." 


JOHN   BRIGHT. 

"Howl,  O  fir-tree,  for  the  cedar  is  fallen."  —  ZECH.  xi.  2. 

THE  death  of  John  Bright  and  the  lessons  of  the  great 
life  which  has  ebbed  away  must  not  be  passed  over.  When 
Edmund  Burke  died  at  Bath  in  1797,  Canning  wrote, 
"There  is  but  one  event,  but  it  is  an  event  of  the  world: 
Burke  is  dead."  And,  though  Mr.  Bright  had  no  preten- 
sion to  the  imperial  endowments  of  Edmund  Burke,  no 
greater  orator,  no  more  disinterested  statesman,  no  man 
more  pervaded  with  the  principles  of  righteousness,  no  man 
more  free  from  the  intrigues  of  party  and  the  taint  of  per- 
sonal ambition,  has  ever  passed  from  the  strife  of  politics, 

"To  where  beyond  these  voices  there  is  peace." 

It  was  said  by  Lord  Brougham  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  that  he 
could  ever  turn  from  the  storm  without  to  the  sunshine  of 
an  approving  conscience  within.  It  has  been  said  by 
Mr.  Gladstone  of  John  Bright  that  "  he  was  ever  ready  to 
lay  his  popularity  as  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar  of  his 
duty."  No  man,  however  great,  is  raised  above  the  com- 
mon heritage  of  errors  and  imperfections;  but,  when  we 
stand  beside  his  grave,  it  is  no  time  to  speak  of  these. 
"Let  us  now  praise  famous  men,"  says  the  son  of  Sirach. 
Leaders  of  the  people  by  their  counsels,  wise  and  elo- 
quent in  their  instructions,  all  these  were  honoured  in 
their  generations,  and  were  the  glory  of  their  times.  Their 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

bodies  are  buried  in  peace,  but  their  name  liveth  for  ever- 
more. Were  this  the  time  or  the  place  to  criticise,  we 
might  admit  in  him  who  has  gone  a  certain  intensity  of 
prejudice;  a  certain  narrowness  of  range;  a  certain  one- 
sidedness  of  judgment;  an  inability  to  throw  off,  under 
changed  conditions,  the  aversions  of  his  youth.  Let  us 
rather  thank  God  for  his  high  example;  for  that  habitual 
loftiness  of  thought  which  might  have  elevated  the  whole 
tone  of  English  politics;  for  that  habitual  integrity  of  life 
which  has  left  to  all  his  contemporaries  the  heritage  of  a 
stainless  example.  I  will  not  speak  of  his  oratory,  though 
in  its  supreme  efforts  it  stood  unrivalled.  He,  more  than 
any  man,  reminded  me  of  the  famous  orators, — 

"  Those  ancient,  whose  resistless  eloquence  .  . . 
Shook  the  arsenal,  and  fulmin'd  over  Greece, 
To  Macedon,  and  Artaxerxes'  throne." 

I  have  heard  him  when,  in  English  of  matchless  strength 
and  matchless  simplicity,  and  in  a  voice  which  sometimes 
seemed  to  breathe  through  silver,  and  rang  anon  with  the 
trumpet  tones  of  scorn  and  indignation,  he  stood  before 
vast  audiences,  playing  on  their  emotions  as  on  some 
mighty  instrument.  I  have  seen  him  now  sweeping  them 
into  stormy  sympathy  before  the  strong  wind  of  his  pas- 
sion; now  holding  them  hushed  as  an  infant  at  its  mother's 
breast;  now  making  them  break  into  radiancy  of  laughter; 
now  whitening  their  upturned  faces  with  sympathetic  tears; 
sometimes  even  lifting  them  to  their  feet  in  a  burst  of 
uncontrollable  and  spontaneous  enthusiasm.  I  have  heard 
him  rain  down  the  large  blows  of  his  impassioned  rhetoric, 
as  when  a  smith  brings  down  his  sledge-hammer  on  the 
glowing  anvil,  forging  the  plastic  iron  into  what  he  will. 


JOHN  BRIGHT.  3  j  3 

And  never  have  I  heard  him  abuse  for  base  or  personal  ends 
this  mighty  power.  Oratory  is  a  natural  gift  and  may  be 
fearfully  perverted.  England  may  thank  God  that,  though 
men  can  become  leaders  of  the  multitude  by  the  coarsest 
and  vulgarest  arts,  though  they  can  poison  them  with  mean 
motives  and  virulent  antipathies,  this  great  tribune  of  the 
people,  who  possessed  in  such  a  high  degree  the  love  as 
well  as  the  confidence  of  the  enfranchised  multitudes,  scorn- 
ing to  answer  them  according  to  their  idols,  guided  them 
with  noble  integrity  to  religious  and  moral  aspirations. 
However  much  he  might  sometimes  be  mistaken,  no  selfish 
interest,  no  covert  ambition,  ever  mingled  with  his  pure 
desire  that  not  only  peace  and  happiness,  but  truth  and 
justice,  religion  and  piety,  might  be  established  among  us 
for  all  generations;  and,  since  we  desire  that  he  should  still 
speak  to  us  by  his  example,  let  me  single  out  these  five 
qualities,  all  of  them  noble  qualities,  as  specially  charac- 
teristic of  his  career, —  his  love  of  the  people;  his  disinter- 
ested sincerity;  his  hatred  for  war;  his  disdain  of  popu- 
larity; but,  above  all  and  more  than  all,  his  inflexible 
homage  to  the  majesty  of  the  moral  law. 

It  was  his  love  and  pity  for  the  people  which  enlisted 
him  —  enlisted  him  at  the  awful  moment  when  "the  sole 
inmate  of  his  household  was  one  motherless  babe " — • 
in  the  main  work  of  his  life,  the  abolition  of  the  Corn 
Laws,  in  the  face  of  a  tenacious,  embittered,  and  mighty 
monopoly.  Those  only  who  know  what  the  state  of  the 
country  was  half  a  century  ago  can  adequately  realize  the 
greatness  of  that  achievement.  By  securing  cheap  bread  to 
the  working  classes  in  days  when,  in  Leeds  alone,  there 
were  20,936  persons  whose  average  earnings  were  under 
one  shilling  a  week,  he  saved  England  from  ruin  and  revo- 


314  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

lution.  Well  might  he  rejoice  in  later  years  as  there  rose 
before  him  the  vision  of  the  harvest  fields  of  the  world, 
from  Canada  to  Australia,  from  Chili  to  the  Black  Sea 
shore,  rolling  forth  billows  of  golden  grain,  and  English 
fleets  traversing  every  sea  to  bring  to  men,  and  women,  and 
little  children  the  fulness  of  God's  earth;  wherever  the 
rain  falls,  wherever  the  sun  shines,  gathering  that  of  which 
the  full  fruition  was  once  denied  to  the  people  by  foolish  and 
unjust  laws.  And  who  would  not  envy  him  the  manly  boast, 
when  he  said  that,  "  if  in  the  centres  of  commerce,  and  in 
this  great  Babylon  in  which  we  are  assembled,  we  do  not 
find  ourselves  surrounded  by  hungry  and  exasperated  multi- 
tudes,—  if  now,  more  than  at  any  time  in  the  last  one 
hundred  years, 

'  Content  sits  basking  on  the  cheek  of  toil,' — 

he  as  much  as  any  living  man  had  some  claim  to  partake  of 
that  glory  "  ? 

Next,  I  would  touch  on  his  entire  disinterestedness.  It 
shone  out  in  his  lofty  independence.  "I  am  no  frequenter 
of  courts,"  he  could  proudly  say.  "I  have  never  sought  for 
office  or  the  emoluments  of  place.  I  have  no  craving  for 
popularity.  I  have  little  of  that  which  can  be  called  the 
lust  for  fame.  I  am  a  citizen  of  a  free  country.  I  love  my 
country.  I  love  its  freedom."  "I  am  not,  I  do  not  pretend 
to  be,  a  statesman ;  and  that  character  is  so  tainted  and  so 
equivocal  in  our  day  that  I  am  not  sure  that  a  pure  and  hon- 
ourable ambition  would  aspire  to  it."  "My  clients  have  not 
been  usually  the  rich  and  the  great,  but  rather  the  poor  and 
the  lowly.  They  cannot  give  me  place,  and  dignities,  and 
wealth;  but  honourable  service  in  their  cause  yields  me 
that  which  is  of  far  higher  and  more  lasting  value, —  the 


JOHN  BRIGHT.  3  j  5 

consciousness  that  I  have  laboured  to  expound  and  to  uphold 
laws  which,  though  they  were  not  given  among  the  thunders 
of  Sinai,  are  not  less  the  commandments  of  God,  and  not 
less  intended  to  promote  and  secure  the  happiness  of  men." 
This  manly  independence  of  judgment  was  strikingly  illus- 
trated by  his  attitude  toward  the  Northern  States  of  America 
in  the  great  Civil  War.  When  in  1862  the  upper  classes 
of  Englishmen,  almost  to  a  man,  and  the  vast  majority  of 
the  middle  classes,  were  in  favour  of  the  Southern  slave- 
holders, when  even  our  leading  politicians  declared  the 
cause  of  the  North  to  be  hopeless, —  Mr.  Bright  repudi- 
ated that  belief  because  he  was  so  deeply  convinced 
of  the  righteous  government  of  the  world.  "The  leaders 
of  this  revolt,"  he  said,  "propose  this  monstrous  thing, 
—  that  over  a  territory  forty  times  as  large  as  England 
the  blight  and  curse  of  slavery  shall  be  for  ever  perpetu- 
ated. I  cannot  believe,  for  my  part,  that  such  a  fate 
will  ever  befall  that  fair  land,  stricken  though  it  now  is 
with  the  ravages  of  war.  I  cannot  believe  that  civilization, 
in  its  journey  with  the  sun,  will  sink  into  endless  night. 
I  have  another  and  a  far  brighter  vision  before  my  gaze.  It 
may  be  but  a  vision,  but  I  will  cherish  it.  I  see  one  vast 
confederation,  stretching  from  the  frozen  north  in  un- 
broken line  to  the  glowing  south,  and  from  the  wild 
billows  of  the  Atlantic  westward  to  the  calmer  waters  of 
the  Pacific  main;  and  I  see  one  people,  and  one  language, 
and  one  law,  and  one  faith,  and  over  all  that  wide  conti- 
nent the  home  of  freedom,  and  a  refuge  for  the  oppressed 
of  every  race  and  of  every  clime."  He  reminded  the  House 
of  Commons,  that  every  year  in  the  slave  States  of  America 
there  were  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  children  born  into 
the  world, —  born  with  the  badge  and  the  doom  of  slavery, 


316  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

—  born  to  the  liability,  by  law,  and  by  custom,  and  by  the 
devilish  cupidity  of  man,  to  the  lash,  and  to  the  chain, 
and  to  the  branding  iron,  and  to  be  taken  from  their  families 
and  carried  they  knew  not  where ;  and  by  their  love  and 
tenderness  to  their  own  children,  as  the  purest  and  most 
holy  feeling  of  their  lives,  he  asked  how  we  should  feel  if 
our  children  were  brought  up  in  a  system  so  "infernal." 
Strong  in  the  intuitions  of  righteousness,  he  had  no  misgiv- 
ing as  to  the  issue  of  the  contest,  because  he  knew  that  it 
rested  with  Him  "  in  whose  hands  are  alike  the  breath  of  man 
and  the  life  of  States."  And  he  was  right.  During  four 
years  of  agony  the  ground  reeled  under  the  American 
nation,  "until  at  last,  after  the  smoke  of  the  battlefield  had 
cleared  away,  the  horrid  shape  of  slavery,  which  had  cast 
its  shadow  over  a  whole  continent,  was  gone  forever." 

Now,  how  came  it  that  John  Bright  so  often  stood 
almost  alone  in  his  convictions  and  his  intuitions,  while 
good  men  wavered  and  far-seeing  men  were  blind?  I 
believe  that  his  prescience  was  due  to  his  unswerving  con- 
viction that  "that  which  is  morally  wrong  cannot  be  polit- 
ically right";  and  that  the  triumph  of  God's  righteousness 
in  the  affairs  of  men  may  be,  indeed,  for  a  time  delayed, 
but  comes  at  length  with  all  the  certainty  of  a  law.  "How 
is  it,"  he  asked,  "that  any  great  thing  is  accomplished? 
By  love  of  justice,  by  constant  devotion  to  a  great  cause, 
and  by  an  unfaltering  faith  that  what  is  right  will  in  the 
end  succeed."  The  secret  of  his  prescience  was  the  firm- 
ness of  his  faith. 

Nor  was  the  Civil  War  between  the  Northern  and  South- 
ern States  of  America  the  only  occasion  on  which  Mr. 
Bright  has  held  convictions  opposed  to  those  of  the  major- 
ity of  his  countrymen.  He  hated  war,  and  in  opposing  the 


JOHN  BRIGHT. 

Crimean  War  he  stood  yet  more  magnificently  alone.  If 
the  present  generation  forgets,  yet  history  will  remember 
the  speeches  in  which  he  at  least  won  the  pure  glory  of 
helping  to  make  England  shudder  at  the  carnage  of  all 
needless  or  ambitious  war, —  the  great  speech  in  the  House 
of  Commons  in  December,  1854,  when  down  many  a  stern 
cheek  he  drew  unwonted  tears  by  the  homeliest  pathos. 
Speaking  of  those  who  had  perished  in  the  Crimea,  he 
said:  "We  all  know  what  we  have  lost  in  this  House. 
There,  very  often,  sitting  near  me,  sat  the  member  for 
Frome.  I  met  him  a  short  time  before  he  was  going 
out,  and  asked  him  whether  he  was  going.  He  answered, 
'he  was  afraid  he  was,' — not  afraid  in  the  sense  of  per- 
sonal fear  (he  knew  not  that), —  but  he  said,  with  a  look 
and  tone  I  shall  never  forget,  'It  is  no  light  matter 
for  a  man  who  has  a  wife  and  five  little  children.'  The 
stormy  Euxine  is  his  grave:  his  wife  is  a  widow,  his 
children  fatherless.  [There  were  others,  too],  but  the 
place  that  knew  them  shall  know  them  no  more  forever." 
And  again,  in  1855,  in  the  passage  most  remembered: 
"The  Angel  of  Death  has  been  abroad  throughout  the 
land;  you  may  almost  hear  the  beating  of  his  wings. 
There  is  no  one,  as  when  the  first-born  were  slain  of  old,  to 
sprinkle  with  blood  the  lintel  and  side-posts  of  our  doors, 
that  he  may  spare  us  and  pass  on.  He  takes  his  victims 
from  the  castles  of  the  noble,  the  mansions  of  the  wealthy, 
and  the  cottages  of  the  poor  and  lowly;  and  it  is  on  behalf 
of  all  these  classes  that  I  make  my  appeal."  And  we  all 
know  how  in  those  discussions  he  contemptuously  repudi- 
ated the  mere  doctrinaire  defence  of  war  out  of  Vattel. 
He  looked  upon  the  "  balance-of-power  "  theory  as  a  ghastly 
phantom  which  for  one  hundred  and  seventy  years  had 


318  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

loaded  the  nation  with  debt  and  taxes,  had  sacrificed  myriads 
of  lives,  and  had  devastated  thousands  of  homes.  No  doubt 
he  carried  too  far  the  doctrine  of  non-intervention.  There 
is  such  a  thing  as  a  righteous  intervention,  as  when  Crom- 
well threatened  such  measures  that,  if  the  persecution  of 
the  Vaudois  did  not  cease,  the  guns  of  England  mrght  be 
heard  in  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo. 

"  Peace  is  no  peace  if  it  lets  the  ill  go  stronger, 
Only  cheating  destiny  a  very  little  longer; 
War,  with  its  agonies,  its  horrors,  and  its  crimes, 
Is  cheaper  if  discounted  and  taken  up  betimes. 
Go  home,  you  idle  teachers, 
The  cannons  are  God's  preachers  when  the  time  is  ripe  for  war." 

But  yet  Mr.  Bright  felt  truly  that  military  glory  is  of 
little  value  compared  to  "the  high  example  of  a  Christian 
nation,  free  in  its  institutions,  courteous  and  just  in  its 
conduct  to  all  foreign  States,  and  resting  its  policy  on  the 
unchangeable  foundations  of  Christian  morality." 

I  know  nothing  that  I  admire  more  in  this  great  orator 
than  his  magnificent  disregard  for  popularity.  "He  feared 
man  so  little  because  he  feared  God  so  much."  For  many 
years  of  his  life  he  had  the  honour  —  I  say  quite  deliberately 
the  honour  —  of  being  one  of  the  best  hated  men  in  the 
country.  For  fully  half  his  life  he  enjoyed  the  beatitude  of 
malediction.  It  is  an  honour  which  he  shareJ  with  many 
of  God's  noblest  heroes  and  sweetest  saints.  It  is  an 
honour  which  he  shared  with  martyrs  and  prophets,  and  with 
the  great  benefactors  of  mankind,  with  the  apostles,  with 
Christ  Himself.  It  is  an  honour  which  every  man  shall  gain 
who  refuses  to  swim  with  the  stream,  who  refuses  to  answer 
the  multitude  according  to  their  idols.  He  was  called  in 
early  years  "a  disaffected  vagabond,"  "a  peddling  econo- 


JOHN  BRIGHT. 

mist,"  "a  wicked  incendiary,"  "a  dangerous  fanatic." 
"They  spit  in  my  face,"  he  said  to  a  friend,  "in  the  streets 
of  Manchester."  The  man  who  has  played  any  real  part  in 
the  history  of  his  time,  and  has  not  been  assailed  with  bit- 
ter and  brutal  words;  the  man  who  has  stirred  up  no  viru- 
lent animosities,  and  heard  no  bitter  hissing, —  is  hardly  a 
fighter  in  the  front  rank  of  life's  most  glorious  battles.  A 
man  who  has  never  been  sneered  at  and  insulted  as  a  fool 
and  a  fanatic  may  have  his  own  smooth  merits,  but  he  can 
never  be  a  champion  of  forlorn  hopes  or  a  pioneer  of  flouted 
truths.  "For  twenty-five  years,"  said  Mr.  Bright  in  1863, 
"I  have  stood  before  great  meetings  of  my  countrymen, 
pleading  only  for  justice.  During  that  time,  as  you  know, 
I  have  endured  measureless  insult  and  passed  through  hur- 
ricanes of  abuse."  Often  has  he  said  that,  even  if  his 
voice  were  the  sole  voice  raised  against  something  which 
he  regarded  as  unholy  or  unjust,  that  single  voice  would 
still  be  raised  in  solitary  condemnation;  and  "amid  the  din 
of  arms  and  the  clamours  of  a  venal  press,  I  shall  have,"  he 
said,  "the  consolation,  which  I  trust  will  be  mine  to  the 
last  moment  of  my  existence, —  the  priceless  consolation 
that  no  word  of  mine  has  tended  to  promote  the  squander- 
ing of  my  country's  treasure  or  the  spilling  of  one  drop  of 
my  country's  blood." 

Like  the  great  Lord  Mansfield,  he  scorned  that  mushroom 
popularity  which  is  the  echo  of  folly  and  the  shadow  of 
renown.  He  desired  only  that  applause  which  is  bestowed 
by  after-ages  on  virtuous  actions.  "It  is  that  popularity 
which  follows,  not  that  which  is  run  after.  It  is  that  pop- 
ularity which,  sooner  or  later,  never  fails  to  do  justice  to 
the  pursuit  of  noble  ends  by  noble  means.  I  will  not  do 
that  which  my  conscience  tells  me  is  wrong  to  gain  the 


32O  QUFSTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

huzzas  of  thousands  or  the  daily  praise  ol  all  the  papers 
which  come  from  the  press.  I  will  not  avoid  doing 
what  I  think  is  right,  though  it  should  draw  on  me  the 
whole  artillery  of  libels, —  all  that  malice  can  invent  or 
credulity  swallow." 

It  was  one  of  his  noblest  characteristics  that  he  always 
referred  every  question  to  the  highest  moral  standard. 
"There  is  no  permanent  greatness  to  a  nation,"  he  said, 
"except  it  be  based  upon  morality.  I  do  not  care  for 
military  greatness  or  military  renown.  I  care  for  the 
condition  of  the  people  among  whom  I  live.  Palaces, 
baronial  castles,  great  halls,  stately  mansions,  do  not  make 
a  nation.  The  nation  in  every  country  dwells  in  the  cottage, 
and,  unless  the  light  of  your  constitution  can  shine  there, 
rely  upon  it  that  you  have  yet  to  learn  the  duties  of  govern- 
ment. May  I  ask  you,  then,  to  believe,  as  I  do  most  de- 
voutly believe,  that  the  moral  law  was  not  written  for 
men  alone  in  their  individual  character,  but  that  it  was 
written  as  well  for  nations  as  great  as  this  of  which  we  are 
citizens?  If  nations  reject  and  deride  this  moral  law,  there 
is  a  penalty  which  will  inevitably  follow.  It  may  not  come 
at  once,  it  may  not  come  in  our  lifetime;  but,  rely  upon  it, 
the  great  Italian  poet  is  not  a  poet  only,  but  a  prophet, 
when  he  says, — 

'  The  sword  of  heaven  if  not  in  haste  to  smite, 
Nor  yet  doth  linger.' 

We  have  experience,  we  have  beacons,  we  have  landmarks 
enough.  It  is  true  that  we  have  not,  as  an  ancient  people 
had,  Urim  and  Thummim,  those  oraculous  gemsxon  Aaron's 
breast  from  which  to  take  counsel;  but  we  have  the  un- 
changeable and  eternal  principles  of  the  moral  law  to  guide 


JOHN  BRIGHT.  32! 

us,  and  only  so  far  as  we  walk  by  that  guidance  can  we  be 
permanently  a  great  nation  or  our  people  a  happy  people." 
And  once  more :  "To  the  outward  eye  monarchs  and  parlia- 
ments seem  to  rule  with  an  absolute  and  unquestioned  sway; 
but  —  and  I  quote  the  words  which  one  of  our  old  Puritan 
poets  has  left  us  — 

'  There  is  on  earth  a  yet  auguster  thing, 
Veiled  though  it  be,  than  parliament  or  king.' 

That  auguster  thing  is  the  tribunal  which  God  has  set  up 
in  the  consciences  of  men.  It  is  before  that  tribunal  that 
I  am  now  permitted  humbly  to  plead;  and  there  is  some- 
thing in  my  heart,  a  small  but  exultant  voice,  which  tells 
me  I  shall  not  plead  in  vain." 

And,  once  again,  —  for,  indeed,  this  was  the  very  differ- 
entia of  John  Bright's  teaching, —  he  said,  when  he  retired 
from  the  government  after  the  bombardment  of  Alexandria : 
"I  asked  my  calm  judgment  and  my  conscience  what  was 
the  part  I  ought  to  take.  They  pointed  it  out  to  me,  as  I 
think,  with  an  unerring  finger;  and  I  am  endeavoring  to  fol- 
low it." 

May  I  not,  then,  say, —  now  that  we  have  considered 
his  patriotism;  his  disinterestedness;  his  disdain  for  popu- 
larity; his  championship  of  the  indefeasible  privileges  of 
our  common  humanity;  his  determination  never  to 

"  Sell  the  truth  to  serve  the  hour, 
Or  palter  with  eternal  God  for  power  " ; 

his  soul  undazzled  by  the  glamour  of  war  and  desirous 
only  to  see  his  country  "leading  the  grand  procession  of 
the  nations  on  the  paths  of  civilization  and  of  peace";  his 
inflexible  determination  at  all  costs  to  be  just,  and  fear  not; 


322  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

and  his  unswerving  homage  to  the  majesty  of  the  moral 
law,  may  I  not  say,  amid  the  dearth  of  men  so  eminent  and 
so  courageous,  "Howl,  O  fir-tree,  for  the  cedar  is  fallen"? 
Mr.  Bright  was  a  Quaker.     His  ancestors  had  been  impris- 
oned by  the  tyrannous  bigotry  of  a  jealous  priestcraft.     He 
sometimes  spoke  of  the  Church  of  England  words  harsh,  if 
not   unjust.     I  hope  that  the  Church  of  England  is  infi- 
nitely too  magnanimous    to    remember   them   with  anger. 
But  little  cause  had  he  to  blush  for  his  connection  with  a 
body  which  more  conspicuously  than  all  other  sects  aimed 
at  spirituality,  despised  the  finicking  pettinesses  of  ritual, 
and  pleaded  for  the  supremacy  of  the  Indwelling  Spirit  and 
the  clearness  of  the  Inward  Light.       He   might  well    be 
proud  of  a  religious   community  so  many  of  whose  sons 
and  daughters  have  borne  on  their  faces  not  only  the  Ten 
Commandments,  but  the  Eight  Beatitudes, —  of  a  community 
which,  small  as  are  its  number,  has  been  foremost  in  all 
works  of  beneficence  and  mercy,  in  the  opposition  to  war, 
in  the  cleansing  of  the  prison,  in  the  emancipation  of  the 
slave.     I  have  always  felt  a  deep  admiration  for  that  Puri- 
tan ideal,  stately  and  strong,  which  finds  so  noble  a  repre- 
sentative in  John  Milton;  and  there  were  some  points   in 
which  the  departed  statesman  resembled  him!      He,   too, 
like   Milton,    lived  on  a  lofty  level  of  dignity  and    self- 
respect.   He,  too,  "reflecting  on  the  deep  mysteries  of  relig- 
ion, on  his  own  doubts  and  frailties,  on  the  shortness  of 
the  present  time,  and  on  the  awful  and  unknown  future," 
disdained    religious    animosities,    and    rose    far   above   all 
"priestly  attempts  to  subjugate  the  mind."     He,  too,  "kin- 
dled his  undazzled  eyes  at  the  noonday  beam,"  and  cared 
little  for  "the  noise  of  timorous  and  flocking  birds,  with 
such  also  as  love  the  twilight."     We  have  lost  him;  and 


JOHN  BRIGHT.  323 

the  House  of  Commons  and  all  English  statesmanship  are 
indefinitely  the  poorer  for  his  loss.  How  many  can  it 
number  to  rank  with  one  who  was  so  conspicuously,  and 
so  continuously,  the  defender  of  the  miserable  and  the 
champion  of  the  oppressed;  whose  unfaltering  faith  in  right 
never  quailed  amid  the  clamours  of  interest  and  greed;  who 
made  the  Bible  his  statesman's  manual;  who  with  mighty 
hand  smote  at  oppression  and  monopoly;  and  whose  words 
of  moral  indignation  against  wrong  and  robbery  sprang  like 
arrows  of  flame  from  a  bow  of  steel!  We  have  lost  him; 
and  may  God  make  us  mindful  to  follow  all  that  was  noble 
and  good  in  his  example.  We  have  lost  him;  and  may 
God  raise  others  like  him  to  our  need. 

"  God  give  us  men  !    A  time  like  this  demands 
Great  hearts,  strong  minds,  true  faith,  and  willing  hands, 
Men  whom  the  lust  of  office  cannot  buy; 
Men  who  possess  opinions  and  a  will ; 
Men  who  have  honour,  men  who  will  not  lie ;  " 

above  all,  men  who  are  true  Christians  as  well  as  eminent 
politicians;  men  who  can  live  pure  lives  as  well  as  make 
able  speeches;  men  who,  whatever  their  mistakes  or  limi- 
tations, yet  fear  God  and  do  righteousness,  and  therefore, 
are  acceptable  with  Him. 


GARIBALDI. 

"  I  will  say  to  them  which  were  not  my  people,  Thou  art  my  people ;  and 
they  shall  say,  Thou  art  my  God. ' — HOSEA  ii.  23. 

FOLLOWING  the  initiative  of  Holy  Scripture,  following 
an  example  set  by  our  blessed  Lord  Himself,  I  have  al- 
ways tried  to  regard  not  only  the  Bible,  but  histofy,  and 
life,  and  the  universe,  the  past  and  the  present,  the  events 
going  on  around  us,  the  lives  and  deaths  of  those  whom  we 
have  seen  and  known,  as  books  and  messages  of  God.  To 
me  it  seems  that,  were  it  given  us  to  read  their  teaching, 
the  living  and  dying  saints  of  to-day  have  as  much  to  reveal 
to  us  as  the  saints  of  old;  and  that  the  living  and  dying 
heroes  of  to-day,  with  all  their  glories  and  all  their  fail- 
ures, might  be  as  full  of  meaning  to  us  as  those  heroes, 
with  all  their  glories  and  all  their  failings,  who  lived 
three  thousand  years  ago.  So  far  as  I  can  see  (and,  if  I  be 
mistaken,  I  will  gladly  be  corrected),  it  is  only  to  the  nar- 
rowness of  our  conventionalism,  that  there  is  anything 
more  intrinsically  sacred  in  the  life  of  Queen  Esther  than 
in  that  of  Queen  Adelaide;  in  the  life  of  Jephthah  than 
in  that  of  Garibaldi ;  in  the  Jerusalem  of  Hezekiah  than  in 
the  London  of  our  Queen.  Saints  of  Scripture,  heroes  of 
Scripture?  Are  sainthood  and  heroism,  then,  mere  local, 
mere  chronological  phenomena?  Men  and  women  of 
Scripture,  were  they  then,  in  any  sense,  more  than  we? 
Dust  they  were,  and  ashes,  as  we  are  dust  and  ashes ;  sinful 
men  and  sinful  women,  whose  very  tears  wanted  washing,  as 


GARIBALDI.  325 

do  ours ;  holy  men  and  holy  women,  whose  virtues  were  ac- 
cepted, whose  sins  were  forgiven,  whose  souls  were  re- 
deemed, even  as  ours;  all  children  of  the  same  heavenly 
Father,  more  or  less  beloved;  all  equally  guilty,  all 
equally  redeemed.  That  is  why  I  have  never  hesitated, 
shall  never  hesitate,  to  speak  about  the  hand  of  God  in 
history,  as  seen  now  no  less  than  of  old;  that  is  why,  as 
in  the  sunset,  in  the  starlight,  in  the  moonlight,  in  the 
earthshine,  in  every  glow  and  every  colour  from  the  rosy 
light  upon  Alpine  crests  to  the  primrose  in  the  grass,  I  see 
but  the  reflections  of  the  same  material  sunbeam,  so  in 
every  high  thought,  in  every  great  utterance,  in  every 
unselfish  sacrifice,  in  every  noble  deed,  I  see  a  sparkle 
from  Him,  the  Father  of  lights,  who  is  always  in  the 
zenith,  always  in  the  meridian,  in  whom  is  no  variableness, 
neither  shadow  of  turning, —  God  in  Christ,  Christ  in  the 
heart  and  life  of  men,  even  of  men  who  know  Him  not, 
men  whose  worship  is  not  the  worship  of  the  sanctuary, — 
there  is  the  gospel.  That  is  how  He  who  fragmentarily 
and  multifariously  spake  in  times  past  to  the  Fathers  by 
the  prophets  hath  in  these  last  days  spoken  unto  us  by  His 
Son.  Even  when  we  speak  of  others,  we  speak  of  Him. 
Through  the  statues  of  the  saints,  we  approach  His  tem- 
ple. Amid  the  cloud  of  radiant  witnesses,  we  press  for- 
ward to  fling  ourselves  lowly  at  His  feet.  We  are  told  of 
a  great  contemporary*  that  to  him  the  dullest  walk  was  not 
dull,  because  his  eye  was  quick  to  catch  "every  sudden 
glory  or  radiance  above;  every  prismatic  hue  or  silver 
lining;  every  rift,  every  patch  of  blue";  that  "he  carried 
his  scenery  with  him " ;  and  that  through  hedgeless  and 
flowerless  plains  he  would  "run  with  a  friend,  as  cheer- 
fully as  the  prophet  ran  before  the  king  from  Carmel  to 

*  Newman,  in  Mozley's  "Reminiscences." 


326  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

Jezreel  to  announce  the  opened  gate  of  heaven."  Let  us, 
too,  carry  our  scenery  with  us  in  the  spiritual  world ;  and 
in  the  light  of  Christ  we  shall  learn  to  see  nobleness  even 
in  imperfection,  and  a  soul  of  goodness  even  in  things 
evil. 

And  thus  it  has  happened  to  me  at  different  times  to 
speak  of  recently  departed  lives,  and  with  this  curious  ex- 
perience,—  that  I  have  scarcely  ever  so  spoken  without 
some  one  or  other  fancying  himself  aggrieved  by  words  of 
generosity  so  spoken  of  the  dead,  and  without  some  one  or 
other  making  it  an  excuse  for  public  criticism  or  private 
severity.  It  was  so,  years  ago,  when  I  spoke  of  Abraham 
Lincoln ;  so,  when  I  spoke  of  Lord  Beaconsfield ;  so,  when 
I  spoke  of  Charles  Darwin.  Well,  such  criticism  will 
never  deter  me.  The  fretfulness  of  the  critic,  the  malice 
of  the  party  religionist,  the  fury  of  the  political  partisan, 
maybe  the  highest  eulogy.  They  say?  What  say  they? 
Let  them  say.  Let  the  unknown  voices  mutter  in  the 
shadow.  With  me,  O  God  of  my  fathers,  O  Christ  that 

died,  O 

"Spirit  of  Love,  and  sweetness,  too, 

Now  leading  on  the  wars  of  God ; 
Now  to  green  isles  of  shade  and  dew, 
Turning  the  waste  Thy  people  trod,"  — 

with  me  may  it  be  an  inveterate  disease  to  believe  that 
"mercy  boasteth  over  justice";  to  see  in  every  man  I  can, 
the  good,  and  not  the  evil ;  to  judge  not  by  the  appearance, 
but  to  judge  righteous  judgments;  to  rejoice  not  in  in- 
iquity, but  in  the  truth;  to  think  evil,  if  possible,  of  no 
man;  to  fling  over  the  words  and  actions  alike  of  the  dead 
and  of  the  living,  of  those  that  love  and  of  those  who  hate, 
of  those  who  are  just  and  of  those  who  are  unjust,  the 


GARIBALDI. 


327 


cloak  of  that  charity 'which  covereth  the  multitude  of  sins; 
to  see  in  diversities  of  operations  the  same  spirit;  to 
believe,  above  all  things,  that,  whatever  else  God  is,  God 
is  righteous,  and  God  is  light,  and  God  is  love. 

Many  may  remember  how,  more  than  twenty  years  ago, 
a  man  visited  us  on  whom  myriads  of  our  people — -sons 
of  the  soil,  men  browned  by  the  fogs  and  by  the  sun  — 
lavished  such  an  outburst  of  ardent  sympathy  that,  as  he 
rode  through  leagues  of  roaring  streets,  kings  on  their 
coronation  day  have  rarely  witnessed  such  a  sight.  That 
man  was  the  Italian  patriot,  Giuseppe  Garibaldi.  It  was 
the  same  in  his  own  country,  the  same  in  almost  every 
country  that  he  visited.  When  he  was  wounded,  de- 
feated, discountenanced,  all  but  a  prisoner,  as  he  passed 
down  the  Lung'  Arno  at  Pisa,  the  people  flung  them- 
selves into  the  river  merely  to  bid  him  farewell.  Men 
braved  martyrdom  for  him.  Women  travelled  hundreds  of 
miles  merely  to  see  him.  Widows  for  his  sake  gave  up  son 
after  son  to  fall  on  the  battlefield.  Priests  for  his  sake 
defied  the  thunders  of  their  Church.  Boys,  clad  in  his  red 
shirt,  ragged,  starving,  bleeding,  houseless,  at  Mentana, 
at  Calatafimi,  at  Marsala,  at  the  Volturas,  would  rush  on 
the  bristling  bayonets  of  Austria  or  charge  against  the  mur- 
derous chasscpots  of  France;  and,  tortured  in  vain  to  reveal 
his  hiding-place,  they  would  die  with  a  smile  upon  their 
lips.  Was  there  ever  such  a  speech  as  that  which  he  issued 
when,  covered  with  blood,  his  clothes  pierced  with  balls 
and  bayonet-thrusts,  he  was  driven  by  the  French  from 
Rome?  "Soldiers,"  he  said,  "what  I  have  to  offer  you  is 
this, —  hunger,  thirst,  cold,  heat,  no  pay,  no  barracks,  no 
rations,  frequent  alarms,  forced  marches,  charges  at  the 
point  of  the  bayonet.  Whoever  loves  honour  and  father- 


228  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

land,  follow  me."  And  to  such  a  promise,  even  to  the 
bitter  end, —  to  insult,  to  starvation,  to  imprisonment,  to 
agonies  of  which  death  was  the  slightest, —  four  thousand 
men  did  follow  him.  Why  was  this?  How  many  would 
get  up  two  hours  earlier  in  the  morning,  how  many  would 
put  their  hands  in  the  bursting  and  overflowing  purse  of 
their  boundless  superfluity,  how  many  would  let  their  little 
ringer  ache  for  you  or  me?  For  this  man  thousands  were 
ready  to  die.  Do  not  be  afraid.  Do  not  set  yourselves  in 
mental  attitudes  of  fine  critical  scorn.  Do  not  think  about 
the  sharp  things  you  will  say  when  I  have  ended.  I  am 
not  going  to  pronounce  any  indiscriminate  eulogy  —  per- 
haps no  eulogy  at  all  —  on  the  name  of  Giuseppe  Garibaldi. 
It  was  said  not  of  him,  but  of  another :  — 

"  I  do  not  praise  this  man, —  the  man  was  flawed 
For  Adam, —  much  more  Christ ! — his  knee  unbent 
(His  hand  unclean),  his  aspiration  pent 
Within  a  sword-sweep  —  pshaw!  but,  since  he  had 
No  genius  to  be  loved,  why,  let  him  have 
The  justice  to  be  honoured  in  his  grave !  " 

Those  words  would  not  be  even  decently  just  as  applied 
to  him.  His  hand  was  clean,  amid  few  that  were.  His 
aspirations,  so  far  from  being  pent  within  the  sword-sweep, 
were  wide  as  the  universal  good.  He  uttered  a  great  many 
follies?  Yes.  He  was  guilty  of  many  actions  which  can 
only  be  regarded  as  rash  and  reprehensible?  Yes.  It  was 
his  own  headlong  obstinacy  which  caused  his  wound  and 
his  defeat  and  his  imprisonment  by  the  soldiers  of  the  very 
king  to  whom  he  had  given  two  splendid  crowns?  Yes. 
He  was  a  perplexing  and  uncontrollable  element  in  serious 
politics?  Yes.  He  shared  all  kinds  of  socialistic  and 
communistic  dreams?  Yes.  His  theology  was  of  a  most 


GARIBALDI. 


329 


curious  complexion?  Yes,  as  when  he  calmly  assured  a 
great  assembly  that  no  such  person  as  St.  Peter  ever 
existed;  and  when  he  penned  the  absurd  and  amazing  note: 
"Dear  Friends, —  Man  has  created  God,  not  God  man. 
Yours  ever,  Garibaldi."  Can  a  priest  or  a  presbyter  of 
any  religion  say  a  good  word  for  such  a  man, —  a  man  con- 
stantly surrounded  by  false  friends  and  miserable  intri- 
guers, as  a  lion  is  surrounded  by  jackals;  a  man  who,  in 
his  obstinate  wilfulness  had  so  little  sanity  of  judgment 
as  to  be  often  all  but  unjust  to  his  patriots,  and  often  all 
but  disloyal  to  his  king?  Let  us  look,  my  friends,  in  our 
own  hearts.  We  are  all  pre-eminently  respectable.  There 
is  nothing  volcanic  in  our  natures,  as  there  was  in  his. 
We,  of  course,  never  do  anything  so  childish  as  to  make 
a  mistake  in  judgment.  We  are  never  carried  away  by  our 
feelings.  Perhaps  under  the  taming  and  tutoring  influ- 
ences of  prudential  self-interest,  in  a  complex  society,  we 
have  no  feelings,  to  speak  of,  which  are  at  all  likely  to 
sweep  us  away.  We  are  all  exquisitely  orthodox,  to  that 
hair-breadth  of  infallibility  which  makes  us  on  every  relig- 
ious question  the  only  persons  who  are  always  right.  All 
that  goes  without  saying.  But,  oh,  my  friends,  has  it  never 
struck  you  that  these  commonplace  lives  of  ours,  with  their 
thin  veneer  of  conventional  virtues,  with  their  all  but  total 
absence  of  anything  high  and  heroical,  are  often  thickly 
covered  with  the  dust  of  vanity  and  of  vice?  When  we 
look  without,  and  see  the  dark  stains  of  self-seeking  and 
Mammon-worship,  which  lie,  like  the  mire  of  the  streets, 
under  the  cold  snow  of  our  respectability;  when  we  look 
within,  when  we  drop  a  plummet  into  the  abysmal  deeps  of 
personality,  when  we  realize  that  the  fairest  cheek  may 
conceal  a  heart  leprous  as  sin, —  yes,  and  that  our  own 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

heart  maybe  like  the  Dead  Sea  wave,  "reflecting  heaven 
upon  its  surface,  but  hiding  guilt  in  its  depths,"-— are  we 
the  first  to  cast  the  stone  of  condemnation  at  a  life  which, 
if  it  erred  greatly,  yet  greatly  achieved?  Has  it  ever 
struck  you  that  the  neutral  tint  of  the  dull  life  and  the 
apathetic  end  of  the  life  whose  chief  records  are  its  small 
orthodoxies,  and  its  investments  in  the  three  per  cents,  may 
be  less  pleasing  to  God  than  the  splendid  sky  of  heroism, 
even  if  thunderous  rain-clouds  sometimes  darken  it?  Give 
me  the  hurricane,  any  day,  rather  than  the  pestilence, —  the 
hurricane  whose  sweeping  ravage  clears  the  stormy  atmos- 
phere rather  than  the  pestilence  which  walks  in  the  dark- 
ness of  organized  hypocrisy  and  creeps  under  the  noonday 
of  prosperous  sin.  Set  the  great  virtues  of  Garibaldi 
against  his  great  faults,  and  I  am  not  sure  (to  tell  you  the 
plain  truth), —  I  am  not  sure  that  I  consider  our  lives  as 
good  as  his.  "I  hope  that  God  will  be  merciful  to  him," 
said  the  pope,  when  he  heard  of  his  death.  I  am  sure  that 
God  will  be  merciful  to  every  soul  which  he  has  made; 
but,  however  that  may  be, — 

"See  there  !  for  this  man,  too,  life's  toil  is  over; 

His  words  are  all  said  out,  his  deeds  are  done; 
For  this  man,  too,  there  comes  a  rest,  however 
Unquiet  passed  his  time  beneath  the  sun. 

"You  say  what  seems  you  best;  your  life's  poor  fountain 

Just  bubbles,  while  his  soared  and  shuddered  down ; 
You  chide  him  as  a  tired  child  chides  a  mountain; 
You  frown  on  him,  and  think  God,  too,  must  frown. 

"  But,  oh  !  God  shall  judge  the  world,  I  take  it 

He  will  not  meet  this  man  by  rule  or  line, 
Who  felt  no  common  thirst,  nor  feared  to  slake  it 
From  that  which  flowed  within  him, —  the  Divine. 


GARIBALDI.  33  j 

"  Or  think  you  God  loves  our  tame  level  acres 

More  than  the  proud  head  of  some  heaven-kissed  hill, 
Man's  straight-dug  ditch  more  than  His  own  free  river 
Which  wanders,  He  regarding,  where  it  will  ? " 

Assuming,  then,  my  friends,  that  you  can  afford  to  look 
down,  with  fine  fastidiousness,  on  Giuseppe  Garibaldi,  and 
give  yourselves  in  the  presence  of  his  memory  the  airs  of 
moral  superiority,  still  ask  yourself  whether  you  have 
walked  half  so  much  in  the  steps  of  the  Christ  whom  you 
profess  as  he  did  in  the  steps  of  the  Christ  whom  he 
knew  but  most  imperfectly.  Say  what  you  will,  I  shall 
try  to  shew  you  that,  loose  and  vague  as  was  his  creed, 
irregular  and  wrong  as  were  many  of  his  actions,  it  is 
only  the  eternal,  Christ-like  elements  in  his  as  in  any 
character  which  can  constitute  true  greatness  or  deserve  to 
win  the  love  of  men.  It  was  not  success  that  dazzled  men 
to  love  him.  He  had  indeed  one  splendid  success,  when 
he  mastered  Sicily  in  a  month,  and  took  Naples  as  a  pas- 
senger by  a  railway  train;  but  he  had  been  defeated  again 
and  again  in  Rio  and  Montevideo;  he  had  been  hung  by 
the  wrists  for  two  hours  before  a  gate  in  the  sight  of  the 
multitude,  till  the  cord  eat  into  his  flesh;  he  was  checked 
at  Rome;  discredited  at  Aspromonte;  betrayed  at  Men- 
tana;  neglected  at  Genoa;  dishonoured  in  the  Vosges. 
His  hopes  were  thwarted;  his  utterances  were  laughed  at. 
"I  have  passed  my  life,"  he  said, —  in  what?  In  money- 
getting?  in  small  self-seeking?  in  an  aimless  round  of  friv- 
olities? No,  but, — "in  the  hope  of  seeing  populations 
ennobled,  and,  to  the  extent  of  my  power,  have  championed 
always  and  everywhere  their  rights;  but  sadly  I  confess 
that  I  have  partly  lived  in  a  false  hope."  It  was  no  suc- 
cess. It  was  not  the  strange  romance  of  a  career  which  was 


332  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

heroic  and  poetic  in  a  day  of  commonplace  and  prose;  but 
amid  great  errors,  amid  grievous  faults,  amid  a  strange 
chaos  of  beliefs,  it  was  a  rich  possession  of  qualities  which 
Christ  Himself  would  have  approved,  which  wetted  with 
unwonted  tears  the  eyes  of  generous  nations  when  this  man 
died.  If  you  want  a  religious  lesson,  if  you  are  not  merely 
trying  to  lull  your  soul  into  a  comfortable  sleep  on  a  pabu- 
lum of  formulae,  if  you  are  a  true  man  or  woman,  see  if 
you  can  find  no  religious  lesson  here,  while  I  point  out  to 
you  in  a  few  words  the  tenderness,  the  generosity,  the  sim- 
plicity, the  self-denial,  which  were  in  this  fighter,  in  this 
republican,  in  this  friend  of  Victor  Hugo  and  Alexandre 
Dumas,  in  this  strange,  erratic,  self-willed  child  of  trouble 
and  romance,  which,  because  they  were  virtues,  were  the 
manifestation  of  the  spirit  of  the  Son  of  Man. 

Great  souls  are  tender.  He  was  tender  even  to  dumb 
creatures.  As  a  little  child,  he  wept  bitterly  at  acciden- 
tally killing  a  grasshopper.  As  a  man,  in  1861,  he  met  a 
Sardinian  shepherd  lamenting  the  loss  of  a  lamb.  He  told 
his  soldiers  to  help  to  find  it.  They  looked  in  vain  far 
into  the  night,  and  he  ordered  them  to  their  beds.  Next 
morning  he  was  found  asleep  long  after  his  usual  early 
hour,  and,  when  they  woke  him,  they  found  that  he  had 
searched  all  night  for  the  lamb,  and,  taking  it  home  with 
him,  had  shared  with  the  poor  dumb  creature  the  warmth 
of  his  own  bed.  How  many  of  you,  rich  or  poor,  or 
workingmen,  would  have  done  as  much  for  twenty  lambs? 
There  have  been  men  who,  like  the  sanguinary  Couthon, 
have  combined  tenderness  to  animals  with  cruelty  to  men. 
Not  so  with  him.  At  Palermo,  when  he  conquered  Sicily, 
he,  the  old  soldier  of  two  worlds,  burst  into  tears, —  not  on 
the  battlefield,  but  at  the  sight  of  the  little  orphans  in 


GARIBALDI. 

the  asylum  wanting  food.  Even  the  fine  ladies  of  White- 
hall, the  maids  of  honour  of  James  II. 's  court,  were  not 
above  bargaining  for  the  prisoners  of  Sedgemoor;  but  Gari- 
baldi, when  he  was  very  poor  in  South  America,  and  was 
offered  a  chance  of  getting  richer  by  buying  Chinese  slaves, 
at  once  indignantly  dashed  his  pen  through  that  clause  of 
the  contract,  saying,  "I  will  never  be  a  trafficker  in  human 
flesh."  Which  shewed  themselves  herein  the  better  Chris- 
tians,—  the  fine  ladies  or  the  filibuster?  If  he  loved  Eng- 
land, was  it  not  because  he  saw  in  England  the  refuge  of 
the  exile,  the  enemy  of  the  despot,  the  home  of  the  free- 
man and  the  hope  of  the  slave?  We  are  all  respectable, 
critical,  orthodox  people;  but  have  we  nothing  to  learn 
from  such  a  tenderness  of  heart? 

Look,  again,  at  this  man's  simplicity.  At  Palermo 
he  occupied  the  royal  palace,  and  was  waited  on  by  the 
viceroy's  servants;  but  he  lived  chiefly  on  water  and  vege- 
tables, and  frowned  if  they  called  him  "Your  Excellency." 
At  Messina,  to  avoid  applause  and  grandeur,  he  left  the 
palace  for  the  light-house,  where  the  conqueror  of  a  king- 
dom, the  idol  of  a  people,  lived  in  a  single  room,  with 
no  furniture  but  two  stools  and  a  couch.  Being  that  rare 
thing,  a  man, —  not  a  mere  plausible  echo  or  a  mere  self- 
indulgent  appetite, —  being  no  sleek  intriguer  or  selfish 
accumulator,  but  a  man, —  he  despised,  as  we  do  not  de- 
spise, the  shallow  imbecilities  of  human  pride.  Garibaldi 
a  sailor  on  a  coasting  smack,  Garibaldi  a  cattle-drover  at 
Rio,  Garibaldi  a  tutor  at  Constantinople,  Garibaldi  a  tal- 
low-chandler at  New  York,  was,  by  virtue  of  an  inherent 
nobleness,  as  lofty  a  person  as  Garibaldi  conqueror  of 

Sicily:  — 

"In  himself  was  all  his  state, 
More  solemn  than  the  tedious  pomp  that  waits 


334  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

On  princes,  when  their  rich  retinue  long 

Of  horses  led,  and  grooms  besmeared  with  gold, 

Dazzles  the  crowd,  and  sets  them  all  agape." 

In  an  age  of  artificiality  and  shams  was  it  nothing  that 
he  witnessed  to  the  imperial  dignity  of  manhood  in  itself? 

Then  how  generous  he  was,  how  rarely  disinterested! 
In  the  siege  of  Rome  he  was  superseded  by  a  mere  nobody. 
"Some  of  my  friends,"  he  wrote,  "urged  me  not  to  accept 
a  secondary  position  under  a  man  who,  only  the  day  before, 
had  been  my  inferior;  but  I  confess  these  questions  of  self- 
love  never  yet  troubled  me.  Whoever  gives  me  a  chance  of 
fighting,  if  only  as  a  common  soldier,  against  the  enemy  of 
my  country,  him  I  will  thank."  "I  confess  these  questions 
of  self-love  never  yet  troubled  me."  He  said  it:  his  con- 
duct showed  that  he  felt  it.  Is  there  a  single  one  of  us  all, 
with  our  feeble  spites  and  small  grudges,  who  can  say  the 
same?  In  Westminster  Abbey  is  the  bas-relief  on  the 
tomb  of  Outram,  the  Bayard  of  India,  which  represents 
Outram's  meeting  with  Havelock,  when,  refusing  to  rob 
him  of  his  hard  earned  glory  by  superseding  him  in  his 
command,  he  served  under  him  as  a  volunteer.  Was  that 
noble  act  of  which  we  are  so  proud, —  was  it  greater  than 
Garibaldi's  when  he  laid  two  kingdoms  at  the  feet  of  a 
king  whom  he  did  not  love,  and  put  away  with  one  hand 
the  rewards  which  he  had  won  with  the  other?  The  very 
evening  that  Victor  Emanuel  entered  Naples,  which  Gari- 
baldi had  given  him,  when  the  shouts  were  always  loudest 
for  Garibaldi,  a  chair  had  been  put  for  the  hero  beside  the 
royal  chair.  Just  before  the  play  began,  a  lackey  came 
and  removed  it.  The  king  entered  with  a  frown,  Garibaldi 
with  that  open,  sunny,  large-hearted  smile  which  won  all 
hearts.  When  the  amplest  revenge  was  in  his  power, 


GARIBALDI.  335 

when  by  lifting  his  finger  he  could  have  raised  a  revolu- 
tion, after  having  done  deeds  which  will  affect  human  his- 
tory for  centuries,  he  went  away  quietly,  asking  no  reward, 
to  the  barren,  rocky  islet  which  was  his  home,  with  barely 
fifteen  shillings  in  his  pocket,  and  having  borrowed  twenty 
pounds  to  pay  his  debts.  If  life  has  made  you  familiar 
with  instances  of  generosity,  even  in  very  little  things, 
which  are  distantly  comparable  with  these  in  great  things, 
you  have  been  more  fortunate  than  I.  I  have  known  many 
personages,  ecclesiastical  and  other,  who  have  walked  the 
world  in  wealth,  in  success,  in  prudent  reticence,  in  never- 
sleeping  look-out  for  the  self-satisfied  interests  of  life,  in 
all  the  odour  of  sanctity.  I  doubt  whether  I  have  known 
more  than  one  or  two  whose  virtues  raised  them,  even  occa- 
sionally, above  essential  littleness,  and  above  bitter  resent- 
ment, or  who  loved  others  better  than  themselves.  And, 
when  I  do  see  such  a  man,  even  if  he  be  a  Turk  and  an 
infidel,  I  do  him  homage  in  Christ's  name. 

And  he  shewed  more  than  a  mere  occasional  flash  of 
generosity:  he  was  habitually  self-denying;  he  was  a  hero 
of  self  denial.  The  great  soul  was  content  to  dwell  in  a 
little  house.  He  disdainfully  waved  aside  the  incense  of 
fulsome  applause.  Being  a  man,  he  was  too  great  for  it. 
He  pushed  riches  aside  for  those  who  cared  for  the  trash. 
What  were  riches  to  him  who  preferred  a  soldier's  fare? 
When  the  Montevideans  offered  some  acres  of  land  and 
some  thousands  of  heads  of  cattle  to  the  Italians  who  had 
fought  under  him,  he  tore  up  the  title-deeds  and  said  that 
they  had  only  fought  from  gratitude  and  for  liberty.  He 
never  accepted  rank.  It  can  add  nothing  to  a  man  who 
possessed  himself  as  a  better  possession,  and  an  abiding. 
At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  swam  in  a  rough  sea  to  save  his 


336  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

comrades  from  a  boat  upset  in  a  squall.  He  saved  a  boy 
from  drowning  in  the  harbour  of  Marseilles.  When  the 
plague  raged,  he  nursed  the  sick  in  a  cholera  hospital.  In 
America  he  was  made  a  general,  but  was  so  poor  that  the 
family  went  to  bed  at  sunset  because  they  could  not  afford 
candles.  Yet  even  then  he  would  take  no  remuneration  for 
his  services  except  pardon  for  some  prisoner  or  alms  for 
the  wounded.  Good  among  the  corrupt,  simple  among  the 
luxurious,  self-denying  among  the  selfish;  disinterested,  as 
Lord  Houghton  said  of  him  in  the  House  of  Lords  in  1849, 
among  those  who  sought  their  personal  advantage, —  clearly, 
this  is  not  a  man  at  whom  selfish  critics  can  safely  cast 
the  stone. 

But  perhaps  you  will  say  to  me,  "This  man,  whom  you 
are  holding  up  to  our  admiration,  was  a  rebel  to  his  Church; 
a  rebel  to  his  king;  he  hated  priests;  he  said  most  foolish 
things  about  religion;  he  once  even  was  blasphemous 
enough  to  baptize  a  child."  Fa'ir  and  softly:  you  may  say 
all  this,  and  I  fear  things  more  serious  than  this;  but  do 
not  let  us  trumpet  all  his  faults  and  errors  above  his  grave. 
I  have  not  held  him  up  to  your  admiration  at  all.  On  the 
contrary,  I  have  been  saying  all  along  how  much  more 
orthodox  and  respectable  we  are.  I  have  only  ventured  to 
ask  (let  your  conscience  give  the  honest  answer!)  whether 
any  one  of  our  narrow  virtues  and  domestic  egotisms  come 
as  near  to  the  spirit  of  the  beatitudes  as  his.  We,  of 
course,  are  all  invited  guests:  he  was  only  of  the  streets 
and  lanes, —  nay,  if  you  will,  the  highways  and  hedges.  "A 
rebel  of  his  Church?"  Well,  .perhaps  he  was  not  very 
devoted  to  the  Church  of  the  Italian  confessional,  to  the 
Church  of  which  the  pope  had  eulogized  as  "model  king" 
that  King  of  Naples  who  had  his  subjects  lashed  to  death 


GARIBALDI.  337 

in  the  public  squares,  and  who  looked  on  through  his  eye- 
glass at  the  agony  of  political  prisoners,  pining  for  light 
and  air  in  his  dungeons  beneath  the  level  of  the  sea. 
"A  rebel  to  his  king?"  Well,  if  he  was  ever  technically 
a  rebel  to  a  king  in  whose  crown  he  had  set  its  most 
splendid  jewels,  remember  that  the  first  time  he  saw  his 
name  in  print  was  on  his  own  death-warrant  signed  by 
that  king's  father,  and  that  that  king  was,  as  he  considered, 
"under  the  subtle  arts  of  a  fox-like  policy."  Remember, 
too,  the  passionate  words  of  that  eminent  American  who, 
in  the  struggle  against  the  slave-trade,  said  that  he  only 
wished  the  two  words  "infidel"  and  "traitor"  to  be  written 
on  his  tomb, —  infidel  to  a  Church  which  could  be  at  peace 
in  the  presence  of  sin ;  traitor  to  a  government  which  was 
a  magnificent  conspiracy  against  justice.  "He  hated 
priests?"  Yes!  he  hated  priests  who  lived  such  lives  as 
the  Augustine  monks  of  Palestrina  in  1848.  He  did  not 
hate  priests  like  the  beautiful,  the  eloquent,  the  noble  Ugo 
Bassi,  who,  unarmed,  tended  the  sick  on  the  battlefield, 
amid  storms  of  shot  and  shell,  with  the  tenderness  of  a 
woman,  and  who  died  as  only  heroes  and  martyrs  die;  but 
he  hated  priests  like  those  of  Bologna,  who  accompanied 
the  death  of  Bassi  with  agonies  of  a  desecration  to  which 
I  dare  give  no  utterance  here.  "His  religious  belief  was 
a  chaos?"  It  maybe  so.  But  "it  is  in  vain,"  he  said, 
"that  my  enemies  try  to  make  me  out  an  atheist  and  a 
blasphemer.  I  believe  in  God.  I  am  of  the  religion  of 
Christ,  not  of  the  religion  of  the  popes.  I  do  not  admit 
any  intermediary  between  God  and  man."  And  at  Caprera 
he  said:  "The  absence  of  priests  is  one  of  the  special 
blessings  of  this  spot.  God  is  worshipped  here  in  purity 
of  spirit,  without  formalism,  free  from  mockery,  under  the 


338  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

canopy  of  the  blue  heavens,  with  the  planets  for  lamps,  the 
sea  winds  for  music,  and  the  green  sward  of  the  island  for 
altars."  And,  when  he  resigned  his  Dictatorship,  he  said: 
"I  am  a  Christian,  as  you  are.  Yes!  I  am  of  that  religion 
which  has  broken  the  bonds  of  slavery,  and  has  proclaimed 
the  freedom  of  men."  But,  then,  he  baptized  a  child? 
Yes:  it  was  a  foolish  piece  of  business,  done  at  the  wish 
of  thousands  who  had  thronged  to  see  him  at  Verona;  and 
he  said:  "I  baptize  thee  in  the  name  of  God  and  of  the 
legislator  Jesus.  Mayest  thou  become  an  apostle  of  truth! 
Love  thy  neighbour;  assist  the  unfortunate;  be  strong  to 
combat  the  tyrants  of  the  conscience  and  of  the  body." 
That  was  what  he  said.  Call  these  acts  and  these  words 
follies,  vagaries,  blasphemies,  if  you  choose  to  use  the 
words;  but,  beneath  whatever  incrustations  of  error,  I  seem 
to  see  all  the  primitive  granite  on  which  religious  faith  is 
built,  at  least  as  clearly  as  I  see  it  in  the  hollow  worldli- 
ness  of  the  intriguing  partisan  and  the  bitter  hatreds  of 
the  religious  newspaper.  And  I  say  of  him,  as  was  said  of 
another:  "I  dare  not  call  this  man  an  infidel,  for  fear  of 
bringing  Christianity  itself  into  reproach.  For,  if  a  man 
can  live  such  a  life  as  he  has  lived,  and  do  what  he  has 
done, —  if  he  can  stand  up  for  justice  in  the  face  of  a  frown- 
ing world,  if  he  can  devote  himself  to  the  redemption  of 
an  outraged  race,  and  be  pelted  with  the  vilest  epithets  for 
a  whole  generation  without  flinching  and  faltering, —  and 
yet  be  an  infidel,  men  may  well  ask,  What  is  the  value  of 
Christianity?" 

"Men  may  well  ask,  What  is  the  value  of  Christianity?" 
I  do  not  indorse  those  words,  though  it  was  a  clergyman 
who  spoke  them.  If  we,  who  profess  Christianity,  were 
but  as  true  to  its  spirit  as  some  have  shown  themselves 


GARIBALDI. 


339 


who  profess  it  less,  the  whole  world  would  fall  once  more, 
with  the  wail  of  agony  and  the  cry  of  forgiveness,  at  the 
feet  of  Christ.  If  the  world  will  not  come  to  Christ,  it  is 
because  they  see  so  little  to  admire,  so  little  that  is  differ- 
ent from  or  better  than  themselves,  in  us  who  make  our 
boast  of  His  name.  The  sons  who  do  somehow  go  and 
work  in  the  vineyard,  while  they  either  say,  "I  will  not," 
or  seem  to  doubt  the  authority  of  Him  who  sent  them,  I 
think  that  they  are  better  Christians  than  we,  who  softly 
murmur,  "I  go,  sir,"  and  sing  our  sweet  hymns,  and  wear 
the  respectable  garb  of  our  gentle  religionism,  while  our 
hearts,  full  of  vanity  and  self-seeking,  full  of  malice  and 
worldliness,  are  far  from  Him.  We  are  the  traitors,  we  the 
infidels.  "Whatever  enlarges  the  sphere  of  human  sym- 
pathy,"—  they  are  the  words  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison,— 
"whatever  opposes  tyranny  in  every  form,  whatever  incul- 
cates love  and  good  will  to  mankind,  and  seeks  to  reconcile 
a  hostile  world,  must  be  in  consonance  with  the  Divine 
Mind."  But,  if  our  Christianity  is  to  consist  in  whispering 
depreciations  and  exacerbating  hatreds,  what  do  we, —  we 
Christians,  we  respectable,  orthodox  people, —  what  do  we 
more  than  others?  Are  the  gates  of  heaven  to  be  flung 
wide  open  to  us  for  such  sleek  services?  Do  not  even  the 
publicans  so?  Blame  this  man,  if  you  like,  and  as  much  as 
ever  you  like;  but  remember,  too,  how  he  suffered.  Re- 
member how,  in  his  life  of  self-sacrifice  for  his  ideal  —  call 
it,  if  you  will,  his  blind  ideal  — of  liberty,  he  was  tried  in 
the  seven-times-heated  fire  of  affliction, —  how  he  was  impris- 
oned ;  how  he  was  starved ;  how  he  was  tortured ;  how  he 
was  betrayed;  how  he  was  hunted,  like  a  partridge,  upon  the 
mountains;  how  he  was  shot  down;  how  those  whom  he 
loved  were  martyred ;  how  the  very  peasants  were  flung  into 


34O  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

prison  who  had  buried  the  poor  wife,  who,  hunted  like  him 
by  the  remorseless  hatred  of  brutal  enemies,  died  in  a 
corn-field,  with  her  head  upon  his  knee.  It  is  not  at  such  a 
man  that  I,  for  one,  shall  shoot  the  little  shaft  of  a  vulgar 
respectability.  Never  will  I  be  of  the  vultures  who  darken 
the  horizon  the  moment  a  lion  dies.  Rather,  I  pray,  God 
accept  him,  Christ  receive  him.  Rather,  I  pray  that  he 
may  wake  in  another  world  as  one  of  those  who  did  Christ's 
work,  and  knew  it  not;  of  them  who  exclaim  in  surprise  at 
the  words  of  welcome,  "  Lord,  when  saw  we  Thee  a-hungered 
and  fed  Thee,  or  thirsty  and  gave  Thee  drink?"  '"When 
saw  we  Thee?  "  Yet  they  have  seen  Him.  He  has  known 
them,  though  they  knew  not  Him.  Does  He  know  us?  Let 
us  not  dwell  on  the  imperfections  of  others:  let  us  consider 
our  own  imperfections,  but,  as  far  as  we  may,  the  virtues  of 
our  brethren. 

I  have  pointed  you  to  some  of  the  lessons  of  a  very 
imperfect  life,  because  their  very  beauty,  in  the  midst  of 
their  imperfections,  shows  that  they  are  but  broken  gleams 
of  the  one  perfect  Life.  If  you  would  see  perfectness,  you 
must  look  for  it  in  one, —  even  in  one  alone, —  even  in 
Christ.  Every  life  is  ugly,  so  far  as  it  abandons  the  ex- 
ample of  His  life.  No  life  is  beautiful,  except  in  those 
things  wherein,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  it  resem- 
bles His.  Generosity,  tenderness,  simplicity,  chivalry, 
dauntless  courage,  the  true  dignity  of  manhood,  the  bound- 
less readiness  for  self-sacrifice  as  exhibited  in  this  dead 
soldier,  the  contempt  which  we  perhaps  profess,  but  which 
he  felt,  for  the  tinsel  of  riches  and  the  phosphorescence  of 
rank, — they  are  great  lessons, are  they  not  ?  Was  he  in  these 
things  Christ's  soldier,  or  was  he  not?  Had  he  in  these 
things  learned,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  any  part  of 


GARIBALDI. 


341 


the  lessons  of  Christ,  or  had  he  hot?  If  you  are'better, 
wiser,  greater,  purer  Christians,  surpass  him,  or  equal  him ! 
Shew  the  same  dauntless,  humane  nature, —  so  proudly 
unselfish,  so  intensely  manly,  so  conscious  of  its  high  des- 
tiny from  God,  that  it  brooks  not  wealth's  rivalry.  By  all 
means,  if  you  can,  "  shew  me  thy  faith  without  thy  works" ; 
but,  in  Heaven's  name,  leave  those  in  peace  who  shewed 
their  faith  by  their  worjts.  But  if,  with  all. our  vaunted 
correctness  of  faith,  we  cannot  distantly  equal  the, virtues  of 
this  most  imperfect  life,  then  let  us  take  home  to  ourselves 
that  lesson,  it  may  be  even  with  salutary  shame;  and 
shocked  at  our  own  pride,  our  own  littleness,  our  own 
unfaithfulness,  the  vulgarity  and  selfishness  of  our  whole 
life  and  our  whole  ideal,  let  us  pray  to  Christ  that  we 
may  be  able  to  shew  even  one  tithe  of  the  virtues  of  those 
saints  of  the  highway  and  the  hedge  who  knew  Him  but 
little,  or  knew  Him  not  at  all.  For  them  and  for  our- 
selves how  can  we  pray  better  than  in  humble  words  like 
these?  — 

"  When  on  my  day  of  life  the  night  is  falling, 

And  in  the  winds  from  unsunned  places  blown' 
I  hear  far  voices  out  of  darkness  calling 
My  feet  to  paths  unknown, 


"  I  have  but  Thee,  O  Father.     Let  Thy  Spirit 

Be  with  me  then,  to  comfort  and  uphold : 
No  gate  of  pearl,  no  branch  of  palm,  I  merit,  < 

No  street  of  shining  gold. 

"  Suffice  it,  if  my  good  and  ill  unreckoned, 

And  both  forgiven  through  Thy  abounding  grace, 
I  find  myself  by  hands  familiar  beckoned 
Unto  my  fitting  place, — 


342  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

"  Some  humble  door  among  Thy  many  mansions, 

Some  sheltering  shade  where  sin  and  strivings  cease, 
And  flows  forever  through  heaven's  green  expansions, 
The  river  of  thy  peace. 

"  There,  from  the  music  round  about  me  stealing, 

I  fain  would  learn  the  new  and  holy  song, 
And  find  at  last  beneath  Thy  trees  of  healing 
The  life  for  which  I  long." 


f>, 


st,      *-*•*•& 


& 


COUNT    LEO    TOLSTOI. 

"  Oh,  save  me  for  Thy  mercies'  sake." —  Ps.  vi.  4. 

BUT  few  men  have  ventured  to  publish  to  the  world  the 
full  confession  of  their  inmost  lives,  to  lay  bare  to  the  gaze 
of  millions  the  naked  heart  as  it  lies  open  before  the  eyes 
of  God.  It  is  right  that  there  should  have  been  this  reluc- 
tance. Reserve  and  the  dignity  of  reticence  are  bulwarks 
which  God  Himself  has  reared  in  our  being,  and  no  one 
with  impunity  can  break  them  down.  The  sacredness  of 
our  individuality  is  the  awful  solitude  into  which  no  human 
foot  should  intrude,  and  in  that  holy  solitude  we  are  alone 
with  God.  Whatever  good  may  have  been  done  by  the 
confessions  of  the  few  who  have  torn  away  the  veils  woven 
by  nature,  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  may  not  have  been  a 
deeper  harm.  There  have  been  partial  confessions,  like 
Bunyan's  "Grace  Abounding "  and  Goethe's  "Truth  and 
Poetry."  But  two  names  stand  out  conspicuous,  and  almost 
alone,  as  those  of  men  who  have  told  to  the  world  the  utter 
truth  about  themselves :  they  are  the  names  of  St.  Augus- 
tine and  Rousseau. 

St.  Augustine  has  told  us  of  his  stormy  and  unhallowed 
youth;  of  the  dreary  period  of  his  Manichean  heresy;  of 
the  dishonourable  bonds  in  which  he  was  long  fettered; 
of  the  turbulent  passions  with  which  he  did  not  strug- 
gle, or  struggled  only  in  vain.  He  has  depicted  himself 
as  he  was, —  a  boy  who  lied  and  stole;  a  youth  who 
plunged  deep  into  folly  and  impurity.  He  has  told  it  all 


34 \  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

in  the  spirit  of  utter  penitence.  He  was  not  afraid  to  look 
on  what  then  he  was,  because  he  had  become  wholly 
changed.  His  confessions  are  the  5ist  Psalm  of  a  spirit 
which  cried  to  God  out  of  the  deep's.  And,  then,  he  has 
told  us  how  the  influence  of  his  holy  mother,  how  a  lofty 
book  of  Pagan  philosophy,  how  the  story  of  the  self-sacri- 
fice of  the  hermits,  thrilled  his  heart;  and  how  at  last, 
when  the  grace  of  God  had  stirred  him  to  the  inmost 
depths,  he  opened  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  at  the  words, 
"Not  in  rioting  and  drunkenness,  not  in  chambering  and 
wantonness,  not  in  strife  and  envying;  but  put  ye  on  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  make  not  provision  for  the  flesh  to 
fulfil  the  lusts  thereof."  From  that  time  forward  Augus- 
tine became  a  devoted  and  holy  man. 

At  the  very  opposite  pole  of  feeling  are  the  confessions 
of  Rousseau.  He  begins  by  saying,  "I  wish  to  shew  to 
my  fellow-men  a  man,  in  all  the  verity  of  his  nature;  and 
that  man  will  be  myself."  He  tells  us  his  character,  his 
morals,  his  inclinations,  his  pleasures,  his  habits.  Very 
shameful  are  some  of  his  disclosures;  yet  he  declares,  with 
immense  audacity,  that,  let  the  trumpet  of  the  last  judg- 
ment sound  when  it  will,  he  will  come  with  that  book  in 
hand  to  present  himself  before  the  sovereign  Judge.  "I 
will  say  aloud,"  he  says,  "See  what  I  have  done,  what  I 
have  thought,  what  I  was.  I  have  spoken  good  and  evil  of 
myself  with  equal  frankness.  I  have  added  nothing  good. 
I  have  concealed  in  silence  nothing  that  was  evil.  I  have 
shewn  myself  despicable  and  vile  when  I  have  been  so: 
good,  generous,  sublime,  when  I  have  been  so.  I  have 
unveiled  my  inmost  being  even  as  Thou,  O  Eternal  Being, 
Thyself  hast  seen  it.  Assemble  round  me  the  innumerable 
crowd  of  my  fellow-men.  Let  them  listen  to  my  confes- 


COUNT  LEO    TOLSTOI. 


345 


sions;  let  them  groan  over  my  unworthinesses  ;  let  them 
blush  at  my  wretchedness.  Let  each  one  of  them,  in  his 
turn,  discover  his  heart  with  the  same  sincerity  at  the  foot 
of  Thy  throne,  and  let  a  single  one  among  them  say,  if  he 
dares,  I  was  better  than  that  man."  We  need  say  no 
more  of  Rousseau  than  this, —  that  no  man  could  have 
written  such  a  book,  no  man  could  have  expressed  such 
sentiments,  except  a  man  devoid  of  every  element  of  Chris- 
tian truth  and  life, —  no  man  save  one  who  had  become  vain 
in  his  imaginations,  and  his  foolish  heart  was  darkened. 
It  is  never  thus  that  the  holy  have  written.  The  cry  even 
of  God's  saints  has  ever  been:  "My  soul  cleaveth  to  the 
dust:  quicken  Thou  me,  according  to  Thy  word." 

In  our  own  days,  and  indeed  within  the  last  few  years, 
another  great  writer  has  published  his  confessions, —  the 
great  Russian  novelist,  Leo  TolstoL  He  has  done  so  but 
partially,  and  not  in  detail,  and  with  the  sole  intention  of 
setting  forth  that  view  of  religious  truth  at  which  he  has 
now  arrived.  But  there  is  in  his  story  so  much  that  is 
full  of  instruction  that,  I  think  we  may  draw  some  val- 
uable lessons  from  Count  Tolstoi's  life,  from  his  conversion 
from  darkness  to  light,  and  from  the  power  of  Satan  unto 
God. 

Count  Tolstoi  is  now  about  fifty-nine  years  old.  As  a 
Russian  noble,  he  was  trained  a  member  of  the  Greek 
Church, —  of  the  Church  which  boasts  itself  to  be  the  Holy 
and  Orthodox  Church  of  Russia.  Trained  among  world- 
lings, he  never  held  a  very  serious  belief.  His  early  relig- 
ion was  nominal :  it  was  only  taken  on  trust ;  and  it  neither 
dominated  his  reason  nor  swayed  his  life.  Such  a  faith  is 
no  better  than  a  pack  of  cards.  It  topples  over  at  a  touch. 
When  he  was  but  twelve,  a  boy  came  to  spend  the  Sunday 


346  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

with  him  at  his  home,  who  announced  it  as  the  last  dis- 
covery of  his  school-fellows  that  there  was  no  God,  and  that 
all  their  religious  teaching  was  a  mere  invention.  Even 
this  —  taken  in  connection  with  the  sceptical  books  which 
he  read  —  was  sufficient  to  make  belief  fade  away  from  the 
boy's  mind.  He  tells  us  of  a  friend  of  his,  whom  he  calls 
S.,  who  was  out  on  a  hunting  party,  and  slept  in  the  same 
room  with  a  brother.  Before  he  lay  down  to  rest,  accord- 
ing to  a  habit  which  he  had  kept  up  from  childhood,  he 
knelt  down  to  pray.  When  he  had  finished  his  prayer  and 
was  preparing  to  lie  down,  his  brother  lightly  said  to  him, 
"Ah!  you  still  keep  that  up?"  Nothing  more  passed  be- 
tween them,  but  from  that  day  his  friend  ceased  to  pray  or 
to  go  to  church. 

For  thirty  years  S.  has  not  said  a  prayer,  has  not  taken 
the  Holy  Communion,  has  not  been  in  a  church, —  not 
because  he  shared  the  convictions  of  his  brother,  but  be- 
cause his  brother's  words  were  like  the  push  of  a  finger 
against  a  wall  ready  to  tumble  over  with  its  own  weight. 
They  proved  to  him  that  there  was  no  depth,  no  sincerity, 
in  his  own  religion;  that  what  he  had  taken  for  belief  was 
an  empty  form;  and  that  every  word  he  uttered,  every  sign 
of  the  cross  he  made,  every  time  he  bowed  his  head  in 
prayer,  the  act  was  to  him  purely  formal,  and  therefore 
unmeaning.  Ah!  my  friends,  beware  of  light  words!  You 
can  never  measure  the  awful  harm  which  they  may  effect. 
I  have  heard  of  a  young  officer  who  was  deeply  impressed 
by  a  sermon  which  he  had  heard.  It  may  have  been  that 
from  that  sermon  the  grace  of  God  might  have  taken  effec- 
tive hold  of  his  heart,  and  wrought  in  him  from  that  day 
forward  a  new  and  blessed  life;  but,  as  he  left  the  church, 
a  brother  officer  made  some  idle,  jeering,  frivolous  remark 


COUNT  LEO    TOLSTOI.  347 

about  the  sermon.  That  base  jest  was  a  fowl  of  the  air,— 
one  of  those  dark  birds  which  Satan  takes  care  to  have 
ready  in  flocks  at  the  door  of  every  church :  it  took  away 
the  good  seed  from  the  young  man's  heart,  and  the  oppor- 
tunity was  gone.  Ah!  my  friends,  I  say  once  more,  Be  on 
your  guard  against  those  fowls  of  the  ai'r  yourselves:  be 
even  more  on  your  guard  lest  any  light,  base  word  of  yours 
should  be  a  bird  of  Satan  to  snatch  God's  grace  from  the 
heart  of  another.  "By  thy  words  shalt  thou  be  justified, 
and  by  thy  words  shalt  thou  be  condemned." 

But  a  second  and  more  fatal  influence  which  under- 
mined the  youthful  faith  of  Count  Tolstoi  was  the  insin- 
cerity which  he  saw  on  every  side  around  him.  When  a 
religion  has  dwindled  into  a  hollow  and  thin-voiced  ghost, 
no  wonder  that  it  has  lost  its  vital  spell.  The  youth  saw 
on  all  sides  of  him  men  and  women  who  professed  the  most 
tremendous  beliefs,  and  shewed  an  outer  conformity  in  all 
forms  and  ceremonies,  in  all  their  own  words  and  actions. 
They  fasted,  they  used  religious  phrases,  they  perpetually 
signed  themselves  with  the  sign  of  the  cross;  but,  alas! 
what  could  this  avail,  when  he  saw  that  they  were  not  good, 
that  they  were  in  no  sense  better  than  others?  He  often 
saw  in  these  religionists  (he  says)  men  of  dull  intellects,  of 
stern  pretensions,  of  self-important  bearing.  Not  only 
did  he  live  among  them  for  years  without  being  once  prac- 
tically and  effectually  reminded  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
living  among  Christians,  and  called  himself  a  member  of 
the  Orthodox  Church,  but  he  found  that  intelligence,  hon- 
esty, frankness,  a  good  heart,  even  moral  conduct,  were 
oftener  met  with  among  avowed  disbelievers  than  among 
insincere  and  nominal  Christians.  Ah!  my  friends,  if  we 
indeed  profess  and  call  ourselves  Christians,  how  infinitely 


348  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

important  is  it  (not  only  for  ourselves, —  remembering  that 
hypocrisy,  though  it  may  stand  the  gaze  of  men,  cannot 
evade  the  glance  of  God, —  but  also  for  all  our  brethren 
who  are  in  the  world)  that  we  should  walk  worthy  of  the 
vocation  wherewith  we  are  called,  in  all  lowliness  and 
meekness,  in  long  suffering,  forbearing  and  forgiving  one 
another  in  love! 

But  there  was  a  third  peril,  worse  than  careless  words, 
worse  than  merely  formal  religionism:  it  was  downright 
.  wickedness  and  worldliness.  In  spite  of  all  the  orthodoxy, 
in  spite  of  all  the  fasts  and  sacraments  and  splendid  cere- 
monials of  the  Russian  Church,  Count  TolstoT  found  that 
among  the  upper  and  cultivated  classes  of  his  countrymen 
men  and  women  openly  lived  in  direct  violation  of  the  laws 
of  God  and  of  His  Christ, —  earthly,  sensual,  devilish, 
having  no  hope,  and  without  God  in  the  world.  "I  hon- 
estly desired,"  he  says,  "to  make  myself  a  good  and  vir- 
tuous man;  but  I  was  young,  I  had  passions,  and  I  stood 
alone  in  my  search  after  virtue.  Every  time  I  expressed 
the  longings  of  my  heart  for  a  truly  virtuous  life  I  was  met 
with  contempt  and  derisive  laughter;  but  directly  I  gave 
way  to  my  lowest  passions  I  was  encouraged.  I  found  am- 
bition, love  of  power,  love  of  gain,  uncleanness,  pride, 
anger,  vengeance,  held  in  high  esteem.  I  gave  way  to 
these  passions;  and,  becoming  like  most  of  those  around 
me,  I  found  that  my  friends  were  not  dissatisfied.  That  I 
should  marry  a  wealthy  bride,  that  I  should  become  an  adju- 
tant to  the  Czar, —  these  were  their  chief  wishes  respecting 
me.  Work  for  God,  life  for  the  future,  treasure  in  heaven, 
did  not  enter  into  the  view  bounded  by  the  narrow  and 
impure  horizon  of  their  worldly  hopes." 

Accordingly,  Count  Tolstoi  fell  wholly  into  the  godless 


COUNT  LEO    TOLSTOI. 


349 


life  of  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil.  "I  put  men  to 
death  in  war,"  he  says;  "I  fought  duels;  I  lost  at  cards; 
I  wasted  my  substance  wrung  from  the  sweat  of  labourers ;  I 
treated  those  labourers  cruelly;  I  deceived  men;  I  lived 
uncleanly.  Lying,  robbery,  adultery,  drunkenness,  vio- 
lence, murder, —  of  all  these  I  was  guilty;  yet  I  was  con- 
sidered by  my  equals  as  a  comparatively  moral  man.  Such 
was  my  life  during  ten .  years,  and  I  cannot  now  recall 
those  years  without  a  painful  feeling  of  horror  and  loath- 
ing." 

Not  that  they  went  wrong  with  him  externally.  He  be- 
came a  distinguished  soldier;  he  became  a  most  eminent 
"writer.  With  fame  he  gained  large  wealth.  He  was  re- 
ceived everywhere  with  warmth  and  flattery.  Was  he 
happy  in  this  career  of  worldliness  and  dissipation,  when 
holiness  had  become  to  him  an  empty  name?  My  friends, 
what  he  was,  what  he  felt,  has  been  felt  by  millions  from 
Solomon  down  to  Schopenhauer,  who  have  all  gone  through 
the  same  bitter  experience  described  by  divine  lips  two 
thousand  years  ago, —  they  have  felt,  and  all  who  walk  in 
their  steps  must  ever  feel, —  "When  he  came  to  himself,  he 
was  an  hungered,  and  he  would  fain  have  filled  his  belly 
with  the  husks  that  the  swine  do  eat."  He  tells  us  that 
he  did  but  grow  disgusted  with  mankind  and  with  himself. 
He  felt  himself  like  a  man  who  was  being  carried  away  in 
a  boat  by  winds  and  waves,  and  who  to  the  question, 
"Where  are  we  to  steer?"  received  no  answer  except, 
"We  are  being  carried  somewhere."  He  felt  that  all  was 
vanity;  that  it  was  a  misfortune  to  be  born;  and  that  death 
was  better  than  life.  Pleasure  and  worldliness  were  to 
him  what  they  always  are, —  the  dust  and  bitterness  of 
Dead  Sea  apples  which  crumble  in  the  taste,  the  bite  of  the 


35Q  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

serpent  whose  fang  is  death,  the  taste  of  the  cup  whose 
draught   is  poison. 

A  change  came  over  his  life,  and  a  change  for  the  better. 
He  married,  and  became  the  father  of  a  family.  Living  on 
his  own  ancestral  estate,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  teach- 
ing of  the  children  of  his  peasantry  and  an  amelioration 
of  their  condition.  So  he  lived  for  fifteen  years.  He  had 
a  good,  loving,  and  well-beloved  wife,  good  children,  a  fine 
estate,  increasing  wealth,  and  European  fame.  He  was 
praised  and  respected  by  all.  His  mind  was  vigorous,  his 
health  perfect.  He  could  study  without  fatigue  for  ten 
hours  at  a  stretch,  and  keep  up  with  the  strongest  of  his 
peasants  in  mowing  a  field.  In  one  sense,  he  was  happy; 
yet  all  the  while  the  apparent  futility  of  it  all  pressed  so 
heavily  upon  him,  he  felt  himself  so  totally  unable  to  an- 
swer his  own  constant  questions,  "Why  am  I  living?"  and 
"What  comes  after?"  that  more  and  more  a  sense  of  per- 
plexity and  stagnation  —  a  stoppage,  as  it  were,  of  life  — 
grew  upon  him.  "I  hid  away  a  cord,"  he  says,  "to  avoid 
being  tempted  to  suicide,  and  ceased  to  carry  a  gun,  be- 
cause it  offered  too  easy  a  way  of  getting  rid  of  life.  I 
knew  not  what  I  wanted.  I  was  afraid  of  life.  I  shrank 
from  it ;  and  yet  there  was  something  that  I  hoped  for  from 
it,  I  knew  not  what."  My  friends,  was  not  this  like  that 
deep  impression  produced  in  the  story  of  the  minister  who,  to 
a  young  man's  hopeful  projects  and  ever  mounting  schemes 
of  ambition,  kept  replying,  And  then?  And  then?  And 
then?  till  he  had  brought  him  to  the  thought  of  old  age 
and  death,  and  shewed  him  how  valueless  was  all  in  com- 
parison with  fitness  to  meet  our  God?  Was  it  not  like  the 
state  of  mind  produced  in  the  young  and  noble  Francis 
Xavier  by  the  repeated  question  of  Ignatius  Loyola,  reit- 


COUNT  LEO    TOLSTOI. 


351 


crated  every  day  and  at  every  turn,  "But  what  shall  it 
profit  a  man,  if  he  gain  the  whole  world,  and  lose  his  own 
soul?"  And  does  not  this  weariness  even  amid  outward 
prosperity  illustrate  the  great  thought  of  St.  Augustine, 
"Thou,  O  God,  hast  made  us  for  Thyself;  and  our  heart  is 
restless  untH  it  find  rest  in  Thee  "  ? 

Two  things  seem  to  have  brought  back  Count  Tolstoi  to 
faith  and  peace.  If  he  had  been  first  shaken  by  a  little 
word,  so  it  was  a  little  word  which  helped  powerfully  and 
materially  to  bring  him  back.  He  had  long  been  struck 
with  the  fact  that  among  the  poor  and  the  peasantry  he  saw 
the  signs  of  a  truer  and  deeper  faith  than  among  the  noble 
and  the  rich.  One  day  he  asked  a  peasant  how  it  was  that 
some  of  the  farmers  were  so  kind  and  fair  to  their  serfs, 
and  others  so  cruel  and  unjust  to  them.  "Men  are  not  all 
alike,"  answered  the  peasant.  "One  man  lives  for  his 
belly;  another  for  his  soul,  for  God."  "What  do  you  call 
living  for  his  soul,  for  God?"  he  asked.  "It's  quite  sim- 
ple," answered  the  peasant,— "living  by  the  rule  of  God, 
of  the  truth."  He  gave  no  answer,  but  turned  away  with- 
the  words  "living  by  the  rule  of  God,  of  the  truth," 
sounding  in  his  ears.  So  you  see  that  as  on  a  word  may 
depend  the  overthrow  of  a  man's  faith,  so  on  a  word  may 
depend  the  salvation  of  his  soul.  If  the  words  of  a  fool  are 
as  a  madman  who  scatters  firebrands,  arrows,  and  death,  so, 
on  the  other  hand,  "  a  word  spoken  in  due  season,  how  good 
is  it!" 

But  another  deep  and  permanent  influence  on  Tolstof  s 
mind  was  the  thought  of  death.  There  was  an  Eastern 
apologue  which  deeply  impressed  him.  A  traveller  in  the 
desert  is  attacked  by  a  furious  wild  beast,  and,  to  save  him- 
self, gets  into  a  dry  well;  but  at  the  bottom  of  the  well  he 


352  QUESTIONS  OF   THE  DAY. 

sees  a  huge  serpent,  with  jaws  wide  open  to  devour  him. 
He  dares  not  get  out  for  fear  of  the  wild  beast.  He  dares 
not  descend  for  fear  of  the  serpent.  So  he  catches  hold  of 
a  branch  growing  out  of  the  crevice  of  the  well.  His  arms 
grow  tired,  but  still  he  holds  on;  and  then  he  sees  two 
mice,  one  white,  one  black,  gnawing  through  the  branch 
inch  by  inch.  He  knows  that  it  must  soon  give  way,  and 
he  must  perish;  yet,  seeing  a  few  drops  of  honey  on  the 
leaves,  he  stretches  out  and  takes  them,  though  he  finds 
them  no  longer  sweet.  The  interpretation  is  not  difficult. 
The  desert  is  the  world;  the  wild  beast  is  passion;  the 
serpent  is  death;  the  branch  is  the  life  to  which  we  cling; 
the  black  and  white  mice  which  gnaw  through  the  branch 
are  the  nights  and  the  days;  the  honey  on  the  leaves  are 
the  few  poor,  transient  pleasures  at  which  men  vainly 
clutch,  as  they  hang  over  the  abyss.  And  what  are  they 
worth  ? 

But  finding  that  learning  and  science  gave  but  a  dreary 
and  unsatisfying  answer  to  all  his  perplexities,  and  that 
the  Church,  with  her  theologies  and  formalities,  gave  no 
satisfaction  to  his  soul,  he  was  yet  led  to  the  ever-strength- 
ening conviction  that  in  God  only  is  life;  that  to  know 
God  only  is  to  live.  And  then  he  was  led  to  the  revelation 
of  God  in  Christ  and  the  deeper  study  of  all  His  teachings. 
And  thereby  he  was  converted;  his  life  was  changed;  he 
received  the  new  heart  and  the  right  spirit;  he  found  possi- 
ble—  yea,  easy,  and,  above  all,  most  blessed  —  that  conquest 
over  himself  and  his  own  bad  passions  which  once  seemed 
so  impossible  to  St.  Cyprian,  and  to  St.  Augustine,  but 
which  millions  of  the  saved  have  found  to  be  not  only 
possible,  but  freely  offered  in  Jesus  Christ.  He  renounced 
wealth,  rank,  fame,  literature,  all  things,  for  Christ. 


COUNT  LEO    TOLSTOI. 


353 


He  became  an  utterly  changed  man.  "I  ceased  to  care," 
he  says,  "for  that  which  I  had  previously  desired,  and 
began  to  long  for  that  for  which  I  had  once  not  cared.  X 
What  had  formerly  seemed  to  me  good  seemed  evil,  and 
what  had.  once  seemed  evil  now  seemed  good.  It  happened 
to  me  as  it  might  happen  to  a  man  who,  having  left  his 
home  on  business,  should  suddenly  find  the  business  to  be 
unnecessary,  and  go  home  again."  All  that  stood  to  his 
right  now  stands  to  his  left :  all  that  was  to  the  left  is  now 
to  the  right.  His  former  wish  to  be  as  far  from  home  as 
possible  has  changed  into  the  wish  to  be  near  it.  "All  my 
desires  changed  places ;  and  all  this  came  from  understand- 
ing the  teaching  of  Christ.  For,  indeed,  I  came  to  Christ 
as  the  dying  thief  came.  I,  like  the  thief,  knew  that  I 
had  lived  and  was  living  ill,  and  that  most  men  round  me 
lived  the  same  life,  and  were  unhappy;  and  I  saw  no  issue, 
but  death  alone.  I  felt,  like  the  thief,  as  if  I  was  nailed 
to  the  cross  of  an  evil  life,  and  the  terrible  darkness  of 
death  awaited  me  after  the  countless  agonies  of  life.  The 
thief  could  believe  that  there  was  salvation  for  him  beyond 
the  grave;  but  I  desired  salvation  in  this  life  also.  Then 
suddenly  I  heard  the  words  of  Christ;  I  understood  them; 
and  life,  once  so  wearisome,  and  death,  once  so  terrible, 
ceased  to  appear  evil  to  me.  Instead  of  despair  I  felt  the 
joy  and  happiness  of  life, —  a  joy  and  happiness  never  to  be 
destroyed  by  death." 

It  is  needless  to  pursue  further  this  story  of  a  soul's  con- 
version. The  essence  has  been  told.  My  friends,  your 
soul  and  mine  are  in  the  same  condition  as  that  of  this  man 
for  whom,  as  for  us,  Christ  died.  When  a  man  is  con- 
verted, when  he  has  realized  the  unseen,  and  tasted  that 
the  Lord  is  gracious,  he  has  at  last  found  out  the  meaning 


354  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

of  death,  life,  and  the  vast  forever.  For  him  the  work  of 
life  is  done.  Henceforth  he 

"  Commands  all  light,  all  influence,  all  fate, 
Nothing  to  him  falls  early  or  too  late." 

The  rain  may  fall,  the  floods  rush,  the  winds  of  misfortune 
may  rise  and  blow  upon  him  from  every  quarter  under 
heaven;  but  they  cannot  injure,  they  cannot  shake  him, 
for  he  is  founded  upon  a  rock.  One  part  of  Count  Tol- 
stoi's experience,  I  know  well,  must  have  been  yours:  you 
all  have  sinned;  and  another  part  of  his  experience,  I 
know  well,  has  been  yours:  you  have  found  that  neither 
the  world,  nor  wealth,  nor  success,  nor  the  life  of  the  fam- 
ily, nor  anything  whatever,  can  give  you  happiness:  nor 
man  nor  nature  satisfy  whom  God  alone  created.  Ah! 
will  you  not  strive,  will  you  not  pray,  that  yours,  too,  may 
be  the  other,  the  blessed  part  of  his  experience, —  that  you 
may  find  Christ,  that  you  may  be  at  peace  with  God,  that 
yours  may  be  the  blessedness  of  him  whose  iniquity  is  for- 
given, whose  sin  is  covered?  To  find  that  blessedness  is 
to  be  ready  for  death  and  God  and  heaven ;  and  it  is  no 
farther  from  you  than  the  sacrifice  of  a  broken  heart,  the 
cry  of  the  penitent,  the  prayer  of  faith.  The  Son  of  Man 
hath  power  even  on  earth  to  forgive  sins.  My  friends, 
this  Spirit  of  God  is  ever  pleading  with  every  one  of  us. 
To-day,  if  ye  will  hear  His  voice,  harden  not  your  hearts. 


THE  JEWS. 

"  He  hath  not  dealt  so  with  any  nation ;  neither  have  the  heathen  knowledge 
of  his  laws." —  Ps.  cxlvii.  20. 

I  PURPOSE  to  pass  in  swift  review  some  of  the  thoughts 
suggested  by  a  subject  which  occupies  two-thirds  of  the 
Bible, —  the  History  of  Israel,  the  ancient  people  of  God; 
and  the  subject  is  so  large  that  I  must  enter  on  it  at  once, 
without  any  preliminary. 

Let  me  urge  upon  you,  first,  in  this  age  of  scepticism, 
how  astonishing  an  evidence  of  religion  —  of  the  reality  of 
God's  providence,  of  the  truth  of  God's  revelation  —  is  fur- 
nished by  the  fortunes  of  this  nation.  It  is  said  that,  when 
Frederic  William  of  Prussia  once  imperiously  bade  his 
chaplain  to  furnish  in  a  single  sentence  a  proof  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  chaplain  replied  "The  Jews,  your  Majesty." 
The  answer  was  a  profound  one.  No  historical  inference 
is  more  obvious  than  this:  that  the  God  of  all  the  earth 
did  choose  out,  did  set  apart,  this  people  to  preserve  His 
truth,  to  teach  His  law,  to  be  an  evidence  of  His  dealings 
with  mankind.  The  torch  of  revelation  which  He  in- 
trusted to  them  often  burned  very  low,  but  they  did  in 
some  sort  hold  it  aloof  for  four  thousand  years  and,  though 
for  two  thousand  years  since  then  the  same  torch,  kindled 
to  a  far  intenser  brightness,  has  been  placed  in  the  hands 
of  Christian  nations,  the  voice  of  prophecy  declares  that 
the  Jews  shall  once  more  share  in  its  splendour,  and  help 
to  spread  its  illumination  even  to  the  ends  of  the  world. 

I  say  the  voice  of  prophecy;  and,  though  this  branch  of 


356  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

religious  evidences  has  often  been  abused,  it  is  a  matter  of 
overwhelming  proof  that  God  has  spoken  to  mankind,  and 
that  His  words  have  not  passed  away.  Let  us  glance  at 
one  or  two  of  the  sacred  utterances  about  the  Jewish 
nation ;  and  I  appeal  to  the  accumulated  tests  of  thousands  of 
years  of  evidence,  when  I  ask  you  to  judge  for  yourselves 
whether  they  have  failed. 

Here  is  one  statement :  "  He  suffered  no  man  to  do  them 
wrong,"-  — to  do  them  wrong,  that  is,  with  impunity, — "but 
reproved  even  kings  for  their  sakes."  Let  me  summon  a 
wholly  unprejudiced,  a  wholly  unexpected  witness  that  it 
has  been  so;  not  a  clergyman,  but  a  king;  not  a  theolo- 
gian, but  a  sceptic;  not  a  student  of  prophecy,  but  a  pupil  of 
Voltaire.  "To  oppress  the  Jews,"  said  Frederic  the  Great 
of  Prussia  (hear  it,  persecutors  of  the  Jews  in  Berlin,  and 
in  Warsaw,  and  in  Kieff !) — "to  oppress  the  Jews  has  never 
brought  prosperity  to  any  government."  Can  you  tell  me  of 
any  king  who  has  been  known  as  a  Jewish  persecutor,  and 
has  not  suffered?  The  great  Rameses  of  Egypt  oppressed 
them:  his  land  is  darkened,  his  magicians  smitten,  his 
first-born  slain,  his  river  turned  to  blood,  his  horses  and 
chariots  overwhelmed  in  the  Red  Sea.  Sennacherib  at- 
tacks them:  the  Angel  of  Death  shakes  pestilence  from 
his  wings  upon  his  host,  and,  as  he  is  drinking  in  the 
house  of  Nisroch,  his  god,  Adrammelech  and  Sharezer,  his 
sons,  smote  him  with  the  sword.  Nebuchadnezzar  op- 
presses them;  and,  lo!  smitten  with  lycanthropy,  he  is 
driven  forth  to  eat  grass,  like  oxen.  Belshazzar  outrages 
their  holy  things;  and,  lo!  the  palace  wall  blazes  before 
him  into  messages  of  doom,  and 

"  That  night  they  slew  him  on  his  father's  throne, 
The  deed  unnoticed,  and  the  hand  unknown. 


THE  JEWS.  257 

Crownless  and  sceptreless  Belshazzar  lay, 
A  robe  of  purple  round  a  form  of  clay." 

Antiochus  Epiphanes  oppresses  them:  in  remorse,  in 
terror,  in  attempted  sacrilege,  he  came  to  his  end,  and  there 
was  none  to  help  him.  Crassus  plunders  their  temple, 
and  soon  after  perishes  miserably.  Titus  half  exterminates 
them;  and  Titus,  so  young,  so  strong,  "the  delight  of  the 
human  race,"  dies  in  the  flower  of  his  age,  perhaps  of 
poison  administered  by  a  brother's  hand.  Spain  disgraces 
herself  by  the  infamous  cruelties  of  their  slaughter  and 
expulsion;  and  Spain  sinks  to  a  fifth-rate  power.  They 
call  Ferdinand  of  Spain  "the  wise,"  said  the  Sultan 
Bajazet;  "yet  by  expelling  the  Jews  he  has  made  Turkey 
rich  and  Spain  poor." 

Take  another  prophecy:  "No  weapon  that  is  forged 
against  thee  shall  prosper."  How  many  nations  have,  one 
after  another,  drawn  the  sword  on  Israel,  and  how  often  has 
the  sword  been  shivered  to  the  very  hilt  in  their  grasp! 
Babylon,  the  hammer  of  the  whole  earth,  smote  at  her  in 
vain;  the  hosts  of  Syria  were  foiled  before  the  fiery  bands 
of  her  Maccabees;  the  spear  of  Assyria  was  broken;  the 
bow  of  Persia;  the  brazen  phalanx  of  Greece;  the  iron 
broadsword  of  Rome.  All  these  have  perished:  Israel 
remains.  You  go  into  an  Egyptian  tomb,  with  its  colours 
bright  in  that  rainless  air  as  though  they  had  been  laid  on 
yesterday,  and  you  see  the  features  of  a  Jewish  king  offer- 
ing his  tribute  among  the  vassals  of  Shishak:  the  con- 
queror has  vanished,  and  his  race  and  his  gods,  but  you 
may  see  those  very  Jewish  features  in  the  streets  to-day, 
and  the  faith  of  the  Jew  remains  unchanged.  The  nations 
have  raged  about  Israel,  as  the  waves  surge  around  a  rock 
in  the  rushing  march  of  some  stormy  sea.  Again  and 


358  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

again  the  rock  is  lashed  by  the  billows,  and  wrapped  in 
sheets  of  foam,  and  overwhelmed  beneath  the  mighty 
masses  of  the  advancing  tide.  But  look  again !  It  is  the 
waves  which  have  been  torn ;  the  waves  which  have  been 
shattered;  the  waves  which  have  been  dashed  into  spray 
upon  the  wind  and  ebbed  away  in  bubbles  upon  the  shore : 
the  rock  still  stands  immovable,  and  with  the  gleam  of 
sunshine  on  its  head. 

Take  another  prophecy:  "Though  I  make  a  full  end  of 
the  nations  whither  I  have  driven  thee,  yet  will  I  not  make 
a  full  end'  of  thee."  Could  any  prophecy  seem  more 
utterly  improbable  ?  Could  any  prophecy  have  been  more 
rigidly  fulfilled?  What  but  God's  providence  could  have 
preserved  this  grain  of  wheat  amid  the  crushing  and  slow- 
grinding  millstones  of  mighty  nations?  Yet  the  millstones 
have  long  burst  into  fragments  and  crumbled  into  dust: 
the  grain  of  wheat  — T  this  tiny,homeless,  insignificant  nation, 
this  mere  handful  of  some  six  millions  among  the  one 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  millions  of  mankind  —  is 
still  distinct  and  full  of  life.  Had  the  prophecy  been 
uttered  of  any  other  nation  under  the  sun,  History  would 
long  ago  have  laughed  it  to  scorn  as  a  futile  prediction. 
Where  is  the  King  of  Hamath,  and  the  King  of  Arpad, 
and  the  kings  of  the  city  of  Sepharvaim,  Hena,  and  Ivah? 
The  traveller  stands  by  a  weird,  waste,  solitary  mound  of 
shapeless  debris  in  a  wilderness;  and  that  is  Babylon. 
He  sees  a  few  Arabs,  under  the  direction  of  an  English- 
man, digging  out  cylinders  of  earthenware  in  a  cornfield; 
and  that  is  Nineveh.  He  sees  the  fragments  of  a  shattered 
sphinx,  half  buried  in  the  drifted  sand  of  the  desert;  and 
that  is  Egypt.  He  sees  some  miserable  fishermen  drying 
their  nets  upon  a  rock;  and  that  is  Tyre.  He  comes  upon 


THE  JEWS.  359 

a  lion  prowling  among  some  broken  pillars;  and  that  is 
Pentapolis.  Nation  after  nation,  once  the  world-rulers 
of  this  darkness,  have  ceased  to  exist  even  in  dishonour; 
have  been  obliterated  down  to  their  very  ruins;  have 
been  wiped  out  of  human  existence,  as  when  one  wipeth 
a  dish,  wiping  it  and  turning  it  upside  down*  But 
Israel,  homeless,  despised,  persecuted,  slaughtered,  still 
lives,  as  unique,  as  separate,  as  distinguishable  in  every 
land,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Pharaohs  and  the  Achaemenids. 
Like  some  river  half  thwarted  by  the  mountain  gorges, 
half  choked  in  the  sands,  half  exhausted  by  separate  chan- 
nels, but  which  no  dam  can  check,  no  drought  exhaust, 
the  stream  of  her  national  life  has  flowed  on,  leaving  all 
other  forms  of  power  and  grandeur  dead  upon  its  banks, — 
dead  generations,  dead  empires,  dead  millenniums,  a  uni- 
verse of  death.  By  Memphis  and  Thebes,  by  Gaza  and 
Askelon,  by  the  tower  of  Belus  and  the  hanging  gardens  of 
Semiramis,  by  Sardis  and  Ecbatana,  by  Tyre  and  Sidon,  by 
Antioch  and  Alexandria,  by  Bagdad  and  Constantinople, 
that  river  flowed;  and  all  these  are  dead  upon  its  banks. 
Imperial  Rome  and  Papal  Rome  have  risen  and  have  fallen; 
the  empires  of  the  Saracen  and  of  the  Mogul  have  been 
born  and  died;  the  Renaissance  has  ended;  the  Reforma- 
tion has  spent  its  force;  dynasties  have  dwindled  into  ex- 
tinction or  died  in  exile.  But  the  river  of  Jewish  life  is 
still  flowing  on;  and  it  may  be  that,  when  London  and 
Petersburg  have  in  their  turn  fallen  to  ruins,  the  waters 
of  Siloa,  which  flow  so  softly,  shall  still  refresh  the  world. 
Take  another  prophecy,  in  strong  contrast  with  the  last : 
"I  have  chosen  thee  in  the  furnace  of  affliction."  Israel 
truly  has  been  no  exception  to  the  rule  that  "he  who  is 
near  me  is  near  the  fire."  The  very  type  of  her  destinies 


360  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

has  been  that  burning  bush,  burning  in  the  wilderness,  burn- 
ing with  the  fire  of  God,  but  unconsumed.  The  Jew  had  to 
toil  in  the  iron  furnace;  he  wept  by  the  waters  of  Baby- 
lon; he  quenched  with  his  blood  the  ashes  of  Jerusalem. 
His  day  of  empire  was  very  brief  and  very  insignificant. 
Massacred  by  the  Romans  and  by  the  Syrians,  massacred  in 
Alexandria  and  Cyprus  and  Caesarea  and  Damascus,  mas- 
sacred by  the  Inquisition,  massacred  by  the  Crusaders,  mas- 
sacred in  England,  and  in  Spain  and  Portugal  and  Russia, 
the  Jew  still  survives.  Dash  him  to  the  earth,  he  seems  to 
rise,  patient,  but  with  renewed  strength.  Drown  him  in  the 
sea,  he  emerges  with  fresh  vigour.  The  plague-stricken 
Ghetto,  the  yellow  garb,  the  scourge,  the  torture,  the  in- 
famy, the  blow  of  manhood,  and  the  hiss  of  childhood  have 
been  powerless  against  him.  Eighteen  centuries  have  passed 
since  the  proud  Roman  struck  on  his  medals  the  figure  of 
Judea  weeping  as  a  captive  beneath  her  palm.  Since  then 
her  temple  has  never  risen  from  its  ashes;  her  religious 
ceremonies  have  become  impossible;  her  land  has  been 
trampled  under  foot  by  herds  of  miserable  conquerors.  But 
she  has  risen  from  under  her  palm,  and  wiped  her  tears; 
and  her  voice  is  still  heard  among  the  nations,  long  after 
the  empires  of  her  conquerors  have  become  "mere  glim- 
merings and  decays." 

Yes:  for  take  but  one  more  prophecy, — "Thy  seed  shall 
inherit  the  Gentiles."  What  could  seem  more  absurd? 
even  more  contradictory  of  what  has  been  said  before? 
"Thy  seed,"-— the  tribe  of  a  Chaldean  emir,  the  family  of  a 
perishing  Armenian!  And  yet  it  has  been  fulfilled.  And 
it  has  been  fulfilled,  not  only  in  the  triumph  of  Christian- 
ity, but  of  the  literal,  and  not  only  of  the  ideal,  seed  of 
Abraham.  Wherever  this  people  has  been,  their  thrift, 


THE  JEWS.  36! 

their  chastity,  their  soberness,  their  genius,  have  given 
them  an  influence  which  neither  scorn  nor  persecution  can 
overthrow.  The  disgraceful  JudenJietze  in  Germany,  the 
infamous  cruelties  in  Russia,  have  been  caused  in  no  small 
measure  by  jealousy  at  the  success  of  this  people,  which 
under  any  tolerable  conditions  always  comes  to  the  front. 
Now  we  are  listening  to  the  songs  of  some  Jewish  poet, — 
Heine,  whose  melody  delights  the  world;  now  to  the 
oratorio  of  some  Jewish  composer, —  Mendelssohn,  whose 
music  uplifts  the  soul  as  on  dovel ike  wings;  now  to  the 
thoughts  of  some  profound  philosopher, —  Spinoza,  whose 
influence  tells  on  our  deepest  thinkers;  now  to  the  tragic 
passion  of  some  great  actress, —  Rachel,  who  holds  specta- 
tors breathless  and  spell-bound;  now  to  the  harangues  of 
some  great  French  or  English  or  Austrian  statesman  of 
Jewish  origin,  who  holds  the  threads  of  the  policy  of 
Europe.  Is  not  that  strange  prophecy  true  when  translated 
out  of  Oriental  style, — "The  sons  of  them  that  afflicted 
thce  shall  come  bending  unto  thee,  and  they  that  despised 
thee  shall  bow  themselves  at  the  soles  of  thy  feet "  ? 

Such  are  some  only  of  the  prophecies;  such  is  their  ful- 
filment. 

And  am  I  not  now  entitled  to  ask  two  things:  Are  not 
the  Jews  a  living  evidence  of  the  truth  of  God?  And,  if 
these  prophecies  have  been  thus  exactly  fulfilled,  shall  not 
those  also  be  fulfilled  which  yet  so  unmistakably  proclaim 
for  Israel  a  splendid  future? 

But  now  is  it  not  worth  our  while  to  ask,  What  has 
been  the  secret  of  this  marvellous  destiny?  Here  is  a 
people  not  perfect,  but  stiff-necked  and  rebellious;  not 
attractive  with  the  brilliant  charm  of  Greece,  not  gifted 
with  the  lordly  capacity  of  the  Roman,  or  the  artistic 


362  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

genius  of  the  Italian,  or  the  keen  versatility  of  the  French, 
or  the  indomitable  enterprise  and  stubborn  integrity  and 
dauntless  veracity  of  the  English;  a  people  constantly 
enslaved,  exiled,  trampled  down  almost  to  extermination, 
occupying  for  but  a  brief  spell  of  imperilled  independence 
a  narrow  strip  of  hilly  land,  crushed  in  between  the  desert 
and  the  sea,  yet  always  rising  superior  to  catastrophe,  and 
springing  out  of  the  ashes  of  conflagration.  What  strange 
secret  is  the  solution  of  this  everlasting  riddle?  My 
friends,  I  will  answer  very  briefly:  to  the  sceptic  the 
riddle  is  insoluble;  to  the  believer  it  is  no  riddle  at  all. 

The  first  solution  is  given  again  and  again  on  the  page 
of  Scripture.  It  is  because  "The  Eternal  hath  chosen 
Jacob  for  Himself,  and  Israel  for  His  own  possession."  In 
so  far  as  this  people  has  of  all  others  been  most  faithful 
to  God,  in  so  far  has  it  been  strong  in  God.  The  gods  of 
the  nations  were  but  idols;  but  it  is  the  Lord  that  ruleth 
the  heavens. 

Bel  bowed  down;  Nebo  stooped;  Dagon  is  shattered; 
Great  Pan  is  dead.  The  Syrians  and  Phoenicians  were 
worshipping  Molochs  and  Asherahs, —  lust  and  hate,— 
Egypt  was  worshipping  beetles  and  oxen  and  hooded  cobras, 
Greece  and  Rome  were  worshipping  their  own  deified  and 
expanded  passions,  when  Israel  was  adoring  Jehovah,  thun- 
dering out  of  Zion,  throned  between  the  Cherubim.  It  was 
believed  that  there  were  seventy  nations  of  the  world. 
"The  lamb  must  be  strong,"  mockingly  exclaimed  the  Em- 
peror Hadrian  to  the  Rabbi  Joshua  Ben  Chananyal,  "which 
has  to  withstand  seventy  wolves."  "It  is  the  Shepherd 
who  is  strong,"  replied  the  sage.  "It  is  the  Shepherd  who 
is  strong,  and"  (hear  it,  anti-Semites  of  Berlin!  hear  it, 
rioters  of  Warsaw!)  "He  will  save  the  lamb  from  the 


THE  JEWS.  363 

seventy  wolves."  He  will — has  He  not  done  so?  The 
sceptic  and  the  atheist  may  triumph  for  a  time;  but  again 
and  again  the  world  has  turned  away  with  abhorrence  and 
agony  from  a  defiance  of  its  God.  Not  to  such  does  the 
future  belong.  "Yea,  many  people  and  strong  nations 
shall  come  to  seek  the  Lord  of  Hosts  in  Jerusalem;  and 
in  those  days  ten  men  of  all  languages  shall  take  hold  of 
the  skirt  of  him  that  is  a  Jew,  saying,  We  will  go  with 
you;  for  we  have  heard  that  God  is  with  you." 

And  the  second  reason  of  the  vitality  of  the  Jew  is  his 
Old  Testament.  "What  advantage  hath  the  Jew?"  asks 
the  objector  to  St.  Paul;  and  he  answers,  "Much  every 
way,  chiefly  because  to  them  were  intrusted  the  oracles  of 
God."  The  Bible,  with  all  its  difficulties,  is  the  only 
literature  which  has  ever  reached,  which  ever  can  reach, 
the  universal  heart  of  man.  It  is  the  Book  with  which  all 
others  are  well-nigh  needless,  and  without  which  all  others 
are  well-nigh  valueless.  A  student  may  read  Plato;  a 
Brahmin  may  pore  over  the  Vedas;  a  Persian  may  study  the 
Zend-Avesta;  a  Chinese  may  know  Confucius  by  heart. 
But  it  is  the  Bible  only  which  can  be  read  by  all  the  world. 
It  is  the  Bible  only  which,  degraded  as  it  has  been  by 
religious  hatred  and  usurped  by  religious  tyranny,  is  still 
the  Urim  and  Thummim  of  all  mankind.  "He  shewed  His 
word  unto  Jacob,  His  statutes  and  ordinances  unto  Israel. 
He  hath  not  dealt  so  with  any  nation;  neither  have  the 
heathen  knowledge  of  His  laws." 

Their  God,  their  Bible;  and  a  third  secret  is  the  ideal 
at  which  Israel  aimed.  The  ideal  of  the  Old  World  mon- 
archies was  cruel  power;  the  ideal  of  Athens  was  a  rhyth- 
mic balance  of  the  faculties;  the  ideal  of  the  Latins  was 
haughty  self-control.  But  the  ideal  of  Israel  alone  among 


364  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

the  nations  was  righteousness.  Patriots  you  will  find,  and 
conquerors,  and  brilliant  thinkers,  and  brave  men,  in  the 
.ancient  histories;  but  in  all  the  annals  of  antiquity  how 
many  men  do  you  find  to  whom  you  could  give  the  epithet 
of  "holy"?  In  the  story  of  Israel  you  find  them  again  and 
again:  Abraham,  the  courageous,  the  humble,  the  unself- 
ish, the  friend  of  God;  David,  rising  from  his  shameful 
falls,  to  recover  in  agonies  of  penitence  the  clean  heart 
and  the  free  spirit;  Isaiah,  pouring  forth  in  the  face  of 
hostile  armies  the  language  of  undaunted  faith;  Jeremiah, 
the  meek  sufferer;  Nehemiah,  the  generous  ruler;  Daniel, 
the  faithful  exile;  Judas  Maccabeus,  the  heroic  patriot; 
Hillel,  the  gentle  and  noble  rabbi.  Yes!  and  was  not  even 
the  Christian  ideal  also  Jewish?  Was  not  St.  Paul  a 
Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews?  Was  it  not  of  Israel  after  the 
flesh  that  even  the  Lord  of  Glory  came?  Israel  has  lived 
because  "Israel  was  the  bringer-in  and  defender  of  the 
ideal  of  conduct,  the  lifter-up  to  the  nations  of  the  banner 
of  righteousness";  and  he  earned  the  promise,  "  To  him 
that  ordereth  his  conversation  aright  will  I  shew  the  sal- 
vation of  God." 

I  will  mention  but  one  more  secret  of  their  life:  it  is 
that  God  kindled  in  the  heart  of  this  teacher  of  the 
nations  an  inextinguishable  hope.  There  was  the  Mes- 
sianic hope,  of  which  I  will  not  speak;  but,  besides,  there 
was  the  universal  hope.  The  hope  sprang  from  the  faith. 
The  religion  of  every  other  nation  was  some  form  of  dual- 
ism. By  the  side  of  good,  it  adored  and  deified  some  form 
of  evil.  Egypt  had  its  Typhon  no  less  than  its  Osiris; 
Persia,  its  Ahriman  no  less  than  its  Ormuzd;  India,  its 
Sheeva  side  by  side  with  its  Bramah.  All  of  them  adored 
devils  and  powers  of  darkness  as  well  as  deities.  Israel 


THE  JEWS.  365 

alone  worshipped  the  Almighty,  the  Unchangeable,  the 
Eternal  Good;  Israel  alone  had  the  high  faith  that  evil  was 
not  incurable,  that  it  was  "but  for  a  moment,"  that  it  should 
pass  away.  If  .the  faith  of  us,  the  gloomy  dwellers  in 
these  wind-swept  islands  of  the  north,  is  "not  still  agoniz- 
ing in  the  terrific  folds  of  an  evil  power,  which  is  a  match 
for  all  goodness,  and  the  destined  tormentor  of  the  uni- 
verse forever,"  we  owe  this,  it  has  been  said,  in  no  small 
measure  to  the  faith  that  evil  does  not  share  the  throne 
of  the  Eternal,  to  the  hope  revealed  to  Abraham  and  his 
sons. 

I  trust  that  this  swift  survey  has  not  proved  to  be  with- 
out its  lessons.  The  sufferings  of  this  marvellous  nation, 
still,  alas!  continue  in  this  nineteenth  century,  still  after 
nineteen  centuries  of  wrongs  inflicted  by  Christian  nations, 
still  hated  in  Christian  hearts,  still  robbed  and  murdered 
by  Christian  hands.  We  pray  for  the  conversion  of  the 
Jews.  Is  the  Christian  envy  of  the  German  Judenhetze,  is 
the  Christian  outrage  of  the  Russian  mobs,  the  way  to  con- 
vert them?  Merciful  heavens!  Is  that  Christianity?  Is 
it  a  high  example?  Is  it  the  proof  of  a  superior  faith? 
Is  it  worthy  of  the  Christ  who  wept  over  Jerusalem, 

"Whose  sad  face  from  the  cross  sees  only  this 
After  the  passion  of  a  thousand  years  "  ? 

We  blame  the  Jew  for  rejecting  Christianity.  Alas, 
where  has  he  seen  pure  Christianity  and  undefiled?  Is  it 
in  the  scowling  face  of  jealousy,  or  the  glaring  eyes  of 
rapine,  that  he  can  read  the  features  of  the  Christ?  Was 
the  Inquisition  Christianity?  Was  it  Christianity  which 
made  ignorant  Crusaders  bathe  their  hands  in  Jewish 
blood?  Was  it  Christianity  which  made  popes  and  em- 


366  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

perors  and  angelic  doctors  declare  that  the  Jews  were  eter- 
nal slaves?  Was  it  Christianity  which  drew  their  teeth  in 
the  dungeons  of  mediaeval  castles?  Was  it  Christianity 
which  burned  them  in  Seville  and  Toledo,  and  robbed  and 
murdered  them  in  London,  in  Lincoln,  and  in  York?  Is 
it  to  Pope  Innocent  III.,  or  to  Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  or 
to  Torquemada  the  Dominican,  or  to  Philip  Augustus  of 
France,  or  to  John  of  England,  that  they  are  to  look  for 
Christian  rulers?  Ah,  if  we  had  been  but  Christians; 
had  they  been  able  to  learn  what  Christianity  was,  not 
from  our  anathematizing  creeds  or  religious  newspapers, 
but  from  that  true  Christian  wisdom,  which  is  from  above, 
and  is  first  pure,  then  peaceable,  gentle,  easy  to  be  en- 
treated, full  of  mercy  and  good  fruits, —  then  I  believe 
that  they  would  have  repented  long  ago  in  dust,  in  ashes. 
Convert  them  to  Christianity?  Ah,  yes!  but  let  us  first 
convert  ourselves,  convert  Lutheran  Germany,  convert 
holy  Russia,  convert  backsliding  England  and  America, 
to  Christianity  as  well!  Depend  upon  it,  we  Christians 
owe  to  Israel  an  immense  reparation  for  our  blasphemies 
against  the  true  faith.  At  least,  we  have  one  small  oppor- 
tunity to-day.  The  Jews  are  a  gentle  and  charitable  race. 
I  know  that  they  have  felt  it  bitterly  that  they  almost 
alone  have  subscribed  to  their  suffering  co-religionists, 
and  that  Christians  have  coldly  held  aloof.  Let  us  shew 
them  if  we  can,  before  it  is  too  late,  that  at  the  very  heart 
of  all  true  Christianity  there  lie  a  trembling  pity  and  a 
universal  love.  St.  Paul  was  ready  to  wish  himself  ac- 
cursed for  their  sakes;  St.  Peter  said  that  they  had  but 
sinned  in  ignorance;  the  Lord  of  Glory  wept  over  them,  and 
prayed  for  their  forgiveness.  If  we  desire  their  peace,  shall 
we  gain  it  by  cruel  outrages,  by  base  jealousies,  by  stupid 


THE  JEWS.  367 

anathemas,  by  unequal  laws?  or  shall  we  gain  it,  not  by 
merely  asserting  that  our  religion  is  (as  indeed  it  is),  com- 
pared with  theirs,  as  the  sunshine  is  to  the  shadow,  but  by 
shewing  the  deeds  of  that  sunshine,  by  walking  as  children 
of  the  light,  by  living  in  the  faith  of  their  God  and  ours, 
by  aiming  at  the  ideal  of  their  righteousness  and  ours,  by 
walking  in  the  truth  of  their  Scriptures  and  ours, —  above 
all,  and  more  than  all,  by  something  more  than  a  hollow 
allegiance  of  the  lip  alone  to  that  Christ  whom  in  the  day 
of  ignorance  their  rulers  rejected,  but  who  shall  yet  feed 
them  and  be  their  Shepherd,  and  be  unto  them  also  an 
everlasting  light? 


NEED  OF  PROGRESS. 

"That  which  decayeth  and  waxeth  old  is  ready  to  vanish  away." —  HEB.  viii. 

'3- 
"  Behold,  I  make  all  things  new."  —  REV.  xxi.  5. 

THE  Book  of  Jeremiah  shews  us  that,  though  the  prophet 
saw  and  survived  a  great  religious  movement,  he  was  pro- 
foundly dissatisfied  with  it.  Our  condition  so  far  resem- 
bles his  that  we,  too,  in  this  Church  and  nation,  have  been 
the  witnesses  of  one  great  religious  movement,  the  heirs  of 
another;  and  truth  compels  me  to  add  that  we,  too,  have 
but  small  reason  to  rest  content  with  their  total  issues. 
The  remark  goes  to  the  root  of  the  entire  circumstances  of 
our  age.  To  probe  it  to  the  bottom,  to  kindle  in  our  hearts 
that  fervour  of  divine  satisfaction  which  tends  to  amend- 
ment, would  demand  fuller  examination  than  is  here  desir- 
able or  possible;  and  yet  the  subject  is  one  which  touches 
so  closely  the  welfare  of  our  Church  and  nation,  and  has 
such  immediate  connection  with  our  individual  duties  to 
God  and  man,  that  it  will,  I  think,  be  profitable  to  us  if 
we  look  at  it  from  different  points  of  view.  Duty,  not 
criticism,  holiness,  not  controversy,  Christianity,  not 
party,  must  be  the  sole  end  we  have  in  view.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  be  fair,  to  be  humble,  to  be  tolerant  and  magnani- 
mous and  at  the  same  time  fearlessly  honest.  Let  us  seek 
this  spirit  while  we  yet  endeavour  to  speak  the  truth  in 
love. 

Wherein  lies  the  necessity  for  constant  advance  ?     Why 


NEED   OF  PROGRESS.  369 

is  the  history  of  nations  always  marked  by  revolutions, 
and  that  of  churches  by  reformations?  It  is  because  man 
is  subject  to  a  divine  law  of  growth,  progress,  develop- 
ment. God  tells  it  as  in  the  Second  Lesson:  Behold,  I 
make  —  I  am  constantly  making  —  all  things  new.  Man 
must  not,  and  he  cannot  stand  still.  "There  is  nothing  so 
revolutionary,  because  there  is  nothing  so  unnatural  and 
convulsive,  as  the  strain  to  keep  things  fixed  while  all  the 
world  is,  by  the  very  law  of  its  creation,  in  eternal  pro- 
gress." Our  political  blessings,  our  religious  institutions, 
are  like  every  other  talent  intrusted  to  us.  They  are 
not  to  be  buried  in  a  napkin  under  the  pretence  of  preser- 
vation. The  law  respecting  them  is,  "Occupy  till  I 
come." 

Look  at  this  law  of  life  briefly  in  the  light  of  political 
history.  What  led  to  our  revolution  in  1648?  Was  it  not 
the  attempt  to  cling  to  what  was  waxing  old  and  vanishing 
away?  Was  it  not  the  attempt  of  the  Stuarts  to  govern 
on  the  same  obsolete  principles  as  the  Tudors?  What  led 
to  the  revolution  of  1688?  Was  it  not  the  preaching  of 
passive  obedience  by  the  clergy,  till  they  were  touched  in 
their  own  persons,  and  forced  to  swallow  their  own  for- 
mulae, so  that  by  their  acceptance  of  William  III.  the  doc- 
trine of  the  right  divine  of  kings  to  govern  wrong  was 
clashed  to  pieces  forever? 

Again,  look  at  France  in  1792.  Were  not  the  orgies  of 
the  Reign  of  Terror  due  to  the  ignorant  notion  that  feudal- 
ism was  to  be  permanent,  and  that  the  grinding  despotism 
of  the  Grand  Monarque  could  be  bequeathed  to  his  feebler 
successors?  The  blindness,  the  gilded  hypocrisy,  the  cal- 
lous luxury  of  Louis  XV.  amid  a  starving  people  hastened 
the  terrible  catastrophe.  The  portent  of  a  gorgeous  crimi- 


37O  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

nality  and  a  guilty  selfishness  evoked  the  counter  portents 
of  the  carmagnole  and  the  guillotine.  A  Toulon  and  a 
Madame  du  Barry  were  the  natural  causes  of  a  Marat  and 
a  Robespierre.  Corruption,  atheism,  luxury  in  high 
places,  let  loose  the  impatient  earthquake  from  below. 

Once  more,  God's  law  that  there  shall  be  constant  prog- 
ress, constant  amelioration,  was  illustrated  on  a  vast  scale 
in  the  New  World.  The  Old  World  spectres  of  civil  and 
religious  tyranny  made  a  desperate  attempt  to  grasp  the 
mighty  sceptre  of  America  in  their  palsying  hands.  The 
success  of  France  would  have  meant  the  despotisms  of  the 
Jesuit  and  the  autocrat.  The  success  of  Spain  would  have 
meant  the  triumph  of  an  infernal  ignorance  animated  by 
an  infernal  zeal.  Why  were  both  these  mighty  powers 
foiled  by  a  handful  of  trading  outcasts,  driven  out  of  Eng- 
land by  kings  and  priests?  Why  was  it  destined  that 
over  the  vast  plains  of  America  should  wave  neither  the 
golden  lilies  of  France  nor  the  Lion  and  Tower  of  Castile, 
but  first  the  glorious  Semper  eadem  of  England,  and  then 
the  stars  and  stripes  of  a  free  republic?  Because  God 
would  not  give  that  country  to  men  who  learn  nothing  and 
forget  nothing,  but  to  men  whose  hearts  were  ennobled  by 
the  passion  for  freedom,  and  to  Puritans  whose  awful  vir- 
tues were  kindled  by  the  spirit  of  the  Reformation.  The 
days  were  gone  by  for  the  bigot  and  the  blood-hound,  for 
effete  tyrannies  and  sickly  superstitions.  The  days  had 
come  for  the  schoolmaster  and  the  printing-press,  for  the 
universal  priesthood  of  all  true  Christians,  for  man  strong 
in  his  inherent  and  inalienable  rights,  for  those  great 
ideas  and  noble  sentiments  of  a  fearless  faith  which  shall 
be  the  seed-corn  of  harvests  yet  to  be. 

Nor  is  the  lesson  different   in  the  religious  history  of 


NEED   OF  PROGRESS. 


371 


mankind.  Churches  need  many  resurrections,  many  Pen- 
tecosts.  An  unprogressive  church  is  a  dying  church:  a 
retrogressive  church  is  a  dead  church.  The  efforts  of  such 
churches  are  but  the  spasmodic  semblance  of  activity:  the 
ceremonies  of  such  churches  are  but  as  spangles  upon 
their  funeral  pall.  What  would  the  church  of  the  fourth 
century  have  become  but  for  Athanasi.us?  What  would 
have  become  of  the  church  of  the  thirteenth  century 
but  for  Francis  and  Dominic,  the  one  reviving  the  lost 
ideals  of  humility  and  poverty,  the  other  awakening 
the  torpid  voices  of  Christian  teaching?  Into  what  a 
slough  of  corruption  would  the  church  of  the  sixteenth 
century  have  been  engulfed,  had  it  not  been  for  Martin 
Luther!  What  deathful  torpor  would  have  succeeded 
the  shamelessness  of  the  Restoration  epoch  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century  but  for  John  Wesley!  Surely,  the  lessons 
of  these  and  many  other  revivals  is  that  we  cannot, 
we  may  not,  stand  still,  may  not  sink  into  slothful  self- 
satisfaction,  must  be  quick-eared  to  the  continuous  teach- 
ings of  God  in  history.  The  paradoxes  of  yesterday  be- 
come the  commonplaces  of  to-day.  At  each  stage  of  God- 
appointed  change  men  apprehend  newly  the  God  who 
changes  not. 

"  Man  is  not  God,  but  hath  God's  end  to  serve, 
Somewhat  to  cast  off,  somewhat  to  become. 
Grant  this,  then  man  must  pass  from  old  to  new, 
From  vain  to  real,  from  mistake  to  fact, 
From  what  once  seemed  good  to  what  now  proves  best. 
How  could  man  have  progression  otherwise  ? " 

There,  then,  is  the  first  great  principle, —  that  neither  in 
the  intellectual,  nor  in  the  political,  nor  in  the  moral,  nor 


372  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

in  the  spiritual  world  can  we  stand  still.  Nature  herself 
teaches  us  the  same  law.  The  unruffled  pool  stagnates 
''into  pestilence.  >~  If  the  air  be  not  purified  by  the  vernal 
breeze,  it  must  be  rent  by  the  rushing  hurricane.  De- 
spised reforms  mean  shattering  revolutions. 

"  New  occasions  teach  new  duties, 

Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth, 
They  must  upwards  still  and  onwards 
Who  would  keep  abreast  with  truth." 

And  the  second  lesson  is  but  another  application  of  the 
same  over  again.  It  is,  as  the  lessons  of  to-day  have 
taught  us,  that  even  new  worlds  need  to  be  renewed.  As 
the  new  leaf-stem  withers  in  its  turn,  and  is  pushed  off  by 
its  successor,  so  even  new  truths  require  to  be  renovated, 
or  they  in  their  turn  corrupt  the  world.  Truth  is  as  the 
manna.  It  must  be  gathered  fresh  from  day  to  day,  or  it 
breeds  worms.  It  i's  an  abject  assumption  to  suppose  that 
any  human  teacher  has  exhausted  truth,  or  that  theologians 
can  say  to  the  rising  tide  of  knowledge,  "Thus  far  shalt 
thou  go,  and  no  further."  Is  it  for  nothing  that  God 
has  shewn  us  a  new  hemisphere  of  earth,  new  stars  in 
heaven,  new  revelations  on  the  rocky  tablets  of  the 
world?  When  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  sailed  from  Delft  in 
1620,  their  pastor  said  to  them,  "'I  am  convinced  that  the 
Lord  hath  yet  more  truth  for  us  yet  to  break  forth  out  of 
his  Holy  Word."  Christ  alone  is  the  truth,  He  alone  is 
free  from  all  error;  nor  can  His  authority  be  claimed  for 
countless  imperfections  of  human  system.  Christianity  is 
not  to  be  identified  in  any  way  with  what  Cyprian  said,  or 
Augustine,  or  Thomas  Aquinas,  or  Calvin,  or  modern  relig- 
ious newspapers.  Christ  said,  "On  this  rock  will  I  build 


NEED   OF  PROGRESS. 


373 


my  church  " ;  but  that  is  no  excuse  for  the  monstrous  usur- 
pations of  the  Popedom.  Christ  said,  "This  is  my  body"; 
but  that  is  no  excuse  for  the  gross  idolatry  and  grovelling 
materialism  of  many  sacramentarian  theories.  The  heresy 
of  all  heresies  of  which  any  church  can  be  guilty  is  to 
forget  that  Christ  is  a  living  Christ,  not  a  dead  Christ; 
that  it  was  (as  He  told  us)  better  for  us  that  He  should  go 
away  that  we  might  enjoy  the  nearer  presence  of  His  Spirit. 
Inspiration  is  not  an  isolated  and  exhausted  spasm  of  the 
past,  but  an  ever  livipg  influence  of  the  present  in  all  pure 
and  noble  souls.  We  may  be  as  much  inspired  as  the 
disciples  of  old.  If  not,  why  do  we  sing, 

"  Come,  Holy  Ghost,  our  souls  inspire  "  ? 

Is  that  as  dead  and  empty  a  formula  as  our  formalism 
makes  so  many  of  our  formulae?  What  do  we  mean  —  do 
we  mean  anything  at  all  —  when  we  say,  "I  believe  in  the 
Holy  Ghost "  ?  Inspiration,  as  all  Scripture  teaches,  is 
not  the  same  thing  as  infallibility;  but  every  man  is  in- 
spired in  whose  heart  the  Spirit  dwells.  We  are  not 
greater  or  better  than  the  Fathers;  but  we  are  enabled 
to  look  on  what  was  said  to  them  of  old  time  from 
the  sunlit  heights  of  advancing  centuries  in  the  Christian 
noon. 

And  God  teaches  us  this  lesson  by  the  total  failure  of 
even  the  best  institutions,  of  even  the  holiest  experiments, 
if  men  cling  to  their  dusty  cerements  instead  of  renewing 
their  inmost  life.  Anthony  became  a  hermit  to  reteach  the 
world  the  infinite  value  of  each  human  soul ;  but  the  fol- 
lowers of  Anthony,  imitating  only  his  outward  institution, 
, became  a  herd  of  brutal  and  ignorant  fanatics.  Francis  and 
Dominic  retaught  the  lessons  of  unworldliness  and  zeal; 


374  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

but  because  they  took  the  brown  serge  or  the  outward  trum- 
pery for  the  secret  of  holiness,  the  Franciscans  became  lazy 
mendicants,  and  the  Dominicans  rabid  Inquisitors.  Luther 
emancipated  the  priest-ridden  souls  of  a  corrupt  genera- 
tion; but  the  reformed  churches,  because  they  changed  to 
his  outward  formulae  and  not  to  his  living  faith,  sank  into  a 
narrow  and  railing  dogmatism.  Ignatius  Loyola  upstayed  a 
falling  church  by  genuine  devotion;  but  the  Jesuits,  adopt- 
ing the  ambitious  machinery,  forgetting  the  true  self-denial, 
became  the  curse  and  the  shame  of  Ronje.  Wesley  awoke  a 
slumbering  age,  and  Methodism  soon  became  a  sect  which 
had  lost  his  spell.  The  Evangelical  movement,  the  High 
Church  movement,  each  brought  into  prominence  forgotten 
truths;  but,  because  those  truths  have  deadened  and  stif- 
fened into  party  shibboleths  and  party  practices,  each 
reformation  needs  itself  to  be  reformed.  Neither  to  them 
nor  to  any  movement  yet  on  the  horizon  do  I  look  for  any 
deliverance  from  the  perils  which  gather  round  us;  for  any 
reawakenment  of  the  people  to  the  great  ideals  which  have 
faded  out  of  their  minds;  for  any  averting  of  that  reaction, 
terrible  and  overwhelming,  which  yet  awaits  us,  if  we  be 
not  wise  in  time.  The  deliverance  will  come  in  God's 
good  time;  but  it  will  not  come  from  the  popular 
phrases  or  the  dominant  machinery.  It  will  only  come 
when  among  all  the  soft,  bland  tones  which  fill  our  ears, 
God  gives  us  once  more  some  prophet's  mighty  voice. 
Both  movements  have  been  blessed,  but  both  alike  have 
lost  their  inspiring  impulse,  their  essential  power.  "So, 
when  the  tempest  uproots  a  pine  on  our  hills,  it  looks 
green  for  months,  perhaps  for  years.  Still,  it  is  timber, 
not  a  tree"  ;  and,  long  before  it  falls  finally,  the  chill 
fungi  have  begun  to  grow  upon  its  decaying  trunk. 


NEED    OF  PROGRESS.  ^75 

Do  not  say  that  these  things  do  not  concern  us.  What- 
ever is  a  lesson  for  nations  and  a  lesson  for  churches  is  a 
lesson  for  individuals,  a  lesson  for  every  one  of  us.  Are 
we,  as  so  many  fear,  in  that  feeble  state  of  helpless  in- 
differentism  and  second-handedness  which  makes  us  some- 
times doubt  whether  the  same  blood  flows  in  our  veins  as 
in  the  veins  of  our  fathers?  Are  we  mere  echoes  for  every 
brawling  voice?  mere  vanes  for  every  veering  wind?  If 
so,  we  shall  not  hand  down  to  our  descendants,  as  it  is  our 
duty  to  do,  the  ancient  honours  of  this  great  and  once  God- 
fearing empire.  Is  our  religion  in  danger  of  becoming  a 
dead  second-hand  affair  of  routine  and  Pharisaism,  power- 
less to  move  the  selfishness  of  the  rich,  or  to  leaven  the 
practice  of  the  poor?  If  so,  that  is  the  reason  why  we  are 
so  conventional,  so  void  of  burning  enthusiasm,  so  pale  in 
virtue  and  faintly  dyed  in  integrity,  not  crimson  in  the 
grain.  Progress,  effort,  enlightenment,  and  ever  more  en- 
lightenment, is  the  law  of  man's  true  being.  Everyone  of 
us  may  be  taught  of  God.  Every  one  of  us  may  know  the 
truth,  and  the  truth  will  make  us  free.  Man  was  made  to 
grow,  not  stop.  When  help  has  been  granted  to  enable 
him  to  grow,  were  it  but  an  inch,  that  help  is  withdrawn, 
and  new  help  given  for  new  needs.  We  are  placed  on  a 
ladder  leaning  against  a  temple  wall  whose  summit  soars 
far  beyond  our  ken.  To  that  height,  on  rung  after  rung  of 
the  angel-trodden  steps,  our  feet  must  climb;  but 

"  The  ladder-rung  our  foot  has  left  may  fall." 

But  let  us  for  our  comfort  remember  this.  Though  the 
dawn  of  the  light  is  gradual,  though  we  must  be  constantly 
coming  nearer  and  more  near  to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth, 
yet  God  never  withholds  from  the  meanest  and  humblest 


276  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 

of  us  a  circle  of  light  sufficient  to  guide  heavenward  our 
unstumbling  feet.  The  planet  Neptune  is  two  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  eighty  millions  of  miles  from  the  sun, 
and  Mercury  basks  in  his  nearmost  blaze:  yet  Neptune, 
too,  revolves  round  the  great  orb  of  fire,  feels  his  influ- 
ence, belongs  to  his  system,  reflects  his  light.  Therefore 
I  hope,  and  I  bid  you  hope.  I  bid  the  humblest,  least 
instructed  Christian  hope.  Is  he  obeying  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments? Is  he  living  in  the  spirit  of  the  Eight  Beati- 
tudes? Then  the  Lord  is  on  his  side,  he  need  not  care 
what  man  says  unto  him.  If  he  be  not  grown  indolent  in 
feeling,  if  he  love  his  brother,  if  he  be  humble,  loving, 
candid,  open-minded,  I  bid  him  hope.  "Let  midnight 
end,  sunrise  will  come  next."  If  we  believe  in  the  soul, 
if  we  are  sure  of  God,  if  we  seek  the  light,  if  we  hate  lies, 
we  need  never  fear.  Theologies  may  be  barren  and 
churches  retrogressive,  but  Christ  lives.  Man  fails,  but 
God  rules.  Neither  is  God  coffined  in  Orthodox  formulae, 
nor  is  Christ  unattainable  except  through  human  priests 
and  material  symbols.  Behold,  He  taketh  away  your  sins. 
Behold,  He  liveth  forevermore.  Behold,  without  any  human 
intervention,  your  souls  may  have  immediate  access  to  Him, 
immediate  communion  with  Him.  Let  us  each  pray  for 
ourselves,  Send  forth  Thy  light  and  Thy  truth  that  they 
may  lead  me,  and  guide  me  unto  Thy  holy  hills  and  to 
Thy  dwelling.  Christ  is  the  truth:  let  us  believe  the 
truth.  Christ  is  the  light:  let  us  receive  the  light. 
Christ  is  the  way:  let  us  follow  the  way.  That  truth  and 
that  light  will  guide  us, —  sufficiently  here,  perfectly  after 
death. 

"  Once  reach  the  roof, 
Break  through,  and  there  is  all  the  sky  above." 


NEED   OF  PROGRESS. 


377 


Here  there  is  darkness,  and  hatred,  and  clouds,  and  winter, 
and  (it  may  be)  approaching  deluge;  but  God  sitteth  above 
the  water-floods,  and  God  remaineth  a  King  forever. 

"Waft  of  soul's  wing  — 
What  lies  above  ? 
Sunshine  and  love, 
Sky  blue  and  spring." 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


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